I always start my New Year’s celebration the same way: dressing up in costume to go trick-or-treating with my kids. Samhain has long been, for me, the end of the old year and the beginning of a new, fresh year ahead. And where I live on rural and wind-swept Martha’s Vineyard Island, it’s a wild and wonderful celebration complete with costumes, children, candy, and lights. But even more than the conventional trick-or-treat evening, it’s a magical time when the small village of Vineyard Haven becomes a sanctuary where the inner child can play, explore, and celebrate.

Little, historic Vineyard Haven hosts nearly every kid on the island (to the point where I almost want to make a donation to the Town Council to support all the families here who are putting on a fabulous show for the entire island’s population). Roaming the streets of this seaside village on Halloween is definitely the most magical thing you can do on Martha’s Vineyard all year: tonight, as I tag along with my 12-year-old daughter and her pack of pre-teen girlfriends, parents congregate on the crowded sidewalks watching their ghouls and goblins not only go up to front doors, but actually enter houses and hang out in people’s kitchens and living rooms. Doors are kept wide open and we are invited to take our fill not only of store-bought candy but of special homemade doughnuts, cups of steaming hot apple cider mulled with peppercorns and orange peel, homemade fudge, and soft salt-water taffies. Friendly “thank yous” and “Happy Halloweens” fill the air. There are hundreds of people combing the streets, and their voices echo all the way to the harbor where the tallships have strung lights across their masts and sails.

Every house is lit up and the glow from their doorsteps reminds me of stories of candles tucked into turnips, of lost souls finding their way, of spirits of the past visiting the living. Since I am wandering the streets, perhaps I am one of these souls and the lights call to me. We are a mass of humanity being welcomed with open arms by bright living people with their lights and candles; their lanterns glow on our faces so we can find our way. Listening to the laughter and calls from people who recognize one another, I feel very comforted; I am at home, a spirit hearkening back in time yet perfectly alive in the present.

Samhain, with its evening darkness, ghoulish masks and sweet candies, reminds me again that the Wheel of the Year is turning and I am turning with it. I am excited to begin another November and I’m determined to let this month be a time of fresh ideas. It’s a thrilling time when the Earth falls into a slumber of hibernation but inside my mind a-thousand-and-one ideas are brimming for next year. At Samhain ideas are in their infancy; desire is only a small tug on the sleeve, not the rousing desire of action in the spring but the subtle pull of a thought in autumn. That idea will grow, tended and nurtured here in November, guided past germination by the lights that twinkle on shipmasts and people’s front doors at Samhain. It will sit through the dark of December like a seed underground, rolling with the Wheel and lighting a spark of curiosity that will make us take note of it in January. And then after that? Who knows what will happen when that Idea grows into full-fledged Desire that engulfs our hearts.

I honor the Wheel as I watch my 12-year-old daughter giggle with her friends going door-to-door; it wasn’t long ago that she and I would sit and read stories together before we went trick-or-treating. We’d pull out a treasured book and I’d read aloud about climbing on the back of Grandfather Deer who would take us to a small boat on which we’d sail across to the Isle of Apples and meet the wonderful woman who stirred the Soup of Souls. My daughter and I would be sure to place an apple beside her bed as payment for the Deer who might come in her sleep, and then she’d get dressed in her costume to go have fun. I like to think these stories still resonate with her, somewhere deep in her subconscious, so that she feels the awe of ancestry, of symbolism, of whispers from the past, of cycles, and of reaching past invisible boundaries to touch something magical.

Tonight I bask in the glow of candles and porch-lights, of smiles and scary faces. I am happy to be allowed to follow behind this pack of giggling teenagers as they celebrate the end of one cycle and press forward, with beauty and strength and silliness, into the next.