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Leave milk and honey for the fae folk.
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Make resolutions, write them on a small piece of parchment, and burn in a candle flame, preferably a black votive candle within a cauldron on the altar.
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Wear costumes that reflect what you hope or wish for in the upcoming year.
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Carve a jack-o-lantern and place a candle in it.
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Choose and enthrone a Winter Queen and King the counterparts of the May Queen and King.
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Make masks and costumes representing the different aspects of the God and Goddess and wear them to ritual or used to decorate your altar or temple area.
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Have each covener bring a carved pumpkin and carry it, lit, above their head in procession to your ritual site in memory of all those who perished during the burning times or your own dearly departed.
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Symbolically extinguish the "hearthfire" of your home and then re-light it from the Samhain Sabbat Fire or cauldron.
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Read or act out the "Descent of Inanna" or the story of Demeter and Persephone.
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During ritual invite departed friends and family into the circle and tell them of all that had happened in your life since their departure. You may wish to set a place for them at your dinner table and use this time to contact them. This is a good time to talk to them of any unresolved issues that you may have had with them and to let them go.
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Slice an apple on the altar displaying the star within and say, "this is the fruit of life- which is death " and then slice a pomegranate and display the seeds saying, " this is the fruit of death- which is life."
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Enjoy the trick or treating of the season.
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Drink apple cider spiced with cinnamon to honor the dead.
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Bury an apple or pomegranate in the garden for spirits passing by on their way to being reborn.
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Leave food outside as an offering to the dead.
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Do divination for the next year using whatever form of divination appeals to you.
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Set out a mute or dumb supper.
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Make a besom, or witches broom.
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Make a witches ladder for protection or as an expression of what you hope to manifest in the year ahead.
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Find a magick wand of oak, holly, ash, rowan, birch, hazel, elm, Hawthorne or willow.
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Let this be the traditional time that you make candles for the coming year, infusing them with color, power, herbs, and scent depending on the magickal purpose.
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At Samhain, witches once gave one another acorns as gifts. During the Burning Times, giving someone an acorn was a secret means of telling that person you were a witch. Acorns are fruits of the oak, one of the most sacred trees to the ancient Celts. They are symbols of protection, fertility, growth, values, and friendship. Perhaps you would like to continue this tradition and give acorns as gifts this season. You might like to paint them gold as a God symbol and decoration.
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Have a New Year's Party-it is, after all, the Celtic New Year!
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Look at old family photo albums or scrapbooks. Try to tell stories about each person in the pictures.
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Honor the dead, remember those you loved who have passed on-perhaps by putting their pictures or something they gave you on your altar during your ritual.
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Carve faces in apples and pumpkins.
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Mix up some hot mugwort tea.
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Make a pumpkin pie.
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Dry meat or make jerky- this is the traditional meat harvest.
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