History & The Arts
Nos Galan Gaeaf: the traditional Welsh celebration being eclipsed by modern Halloween
...think of it as “the winter calends”, or “the first day of winter”. Calan was one of hundreds of Latin loan words that entered the Brittonic language, the ancestor of the Welsh language, during the period in which Britain was part of the Roman Empire. There is, however, an element of the name which does have Celtic ancestry. Calan Gaeaf on its own is November 1,...