October is, in most years, the Sukkot month. Booths stand in courtyards and on balconies, the holiday runs a week, and then comes the day that closes the entire run of festivals, after which, all at once, everything goes back to work.
It is also the month the season genuinely turns: the first rain usually arrives, the clocks go back at the end of it, and darkness suddenly comes an hour early. And in recent years the Israeli calendar has taken on one more heavy date that falls here in most years: the national memorial day for 7 October.
Where the name comes from: "the eighth" that sits tenth
October comes from octo, eight, and in the old Roman calendar that opened in March it really was the eighth. The two months added at the head of the year, January and February, pushed it permanently into tenth place.
October had more candidates for a new name than any other month. Domitian called it Domitianus, and the name was erased when he died; Commodus went further and renamed all twelve months after his own titles, which was undone just as quickly. October outlasted all of them and stayed "the eighth".
The last serious attempt to rename it was revolutionary rather than imperial: in the calendar introduced by the French Revolution in 1793 the month became Vendémiaire, "the month of the grape harvest". That did not last either, and twelve years later October had its Roman name back.
The season in Israel: the month the year turns over
October is the only month of the year whose beginning and end belong to two different seasons.
The first fortnight is still summer: 29–30°C on the coast, a sea at 27°C that is at its most pleasant, and sometimes one last sharav. Then comes the yoreh: the first rain of the year, usually in the final third of the month, occasionally as an early surprise during Sukkot. It lasts an hour, wets the dust and changes the smell of the air, and after it nobody can pretend the summer is still on.
By the end of the month the coast is down to about 28°C by day and Jerusalem to about 25°C, with hill nights falling to 15°C. And on the last Sunday of October the clocks go back: the most keenly felt change of the whole year, because from that evening it is dark before five.
October around the world
October is the last harvest month, and almost all of its customs are about the end of the season and about the dead.
Halloween, on the 31st, now looks like an American festival of costumes and sweets, but it descends from the Celtic Samhain: the feast that marked the end of the ingathering and the start of winter, and the night on which the boundary between the worlds was believed to thin. In Mexico the same idea runs on into the days that follow: Día de Muertos, with home altars, drifts of orange marigolds, and the food the dead person liked laid on the table.
Canada holds its Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, six weeks before the American one, simply because the harvest there finishes earlier. India's Diwali, the festival of lights, often falls in this month and drifts as well: the Hindu calendar is lunisolar too. And across Europe, as in Israel, the clocks go back at the end of the month.
The Jewish festivals and memorial days that fall in October
October is the second half of Tishrei's crowding. Exactly which festivals land in it depends on the year: when the Hebrew calendar runs late, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come into it too; when it runs early, most of October already belongs to the quiet of Cheshvan.
Sukkot: seven days from 15 Tishrei, in October in most years. The festival on which people move outdoors and eat in a temporary hut, and the great week off of the Israeli autumn. Sukkot page.
Simchat Torah: on 22 Tishrei (the following day in the Diaspora), when the annual reading of the Torah is finished and begun again, closing the whole Tishrei run. Simchat Torah page.
The national memorial day for 7 October: fixed to 24 Tishrei, two days after Simchat Torah, so it falls in October in most years. When the date lands on a Sabbath the ceremonies move to the Sunday after.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur reach October only in the later years: 1 Tishrei can come as late as 5 October.
After all of them Cheshvan begins, the one month of the Hebrew year with nothing marked in it at all. The grid at the top of this page shows how October splits between Tishrei and Cheshvan in the year selected, and the button above it prints the month to a single page. For the full list there is the annual holiday calendar; for the current month, the home page.
Common questions about October
How many days are in October?
Thirty-one.
Which Hebrew months fall in October?
Tishrei and Cheshvan, plus the start of Kislev when the Hebrew calendar runs early. In late years almost all of October sits inside Tishrei.
When is the memorial day for 7 October?
The national memorial day is fixed to the Hebrew date of 24 Tishrei, two days after Simchat Torah, rather than to 7 October on the civil calendar. It therefore moves from year to year and lands in October in most of them, this year on 15/10/36.
When do the clocks go back in Israel?
On the last Sunday of October, at 02:00.
Why is October called that if it is the tenth month?
The name comes from octo, eight, after its place in the old Roman year that began in March. Adding January and February at the front shifted it two places and the name was never updated.