the annual Halloween re-read

[crazycatlord]

Oct 31, 2020 2:58:05 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I grew up in a catholic country. So no monsters, candies or pumpkins for me. I spent all the November 1st's of my childhood in a cemetery. As you may know, Halloween exists also in Catholicism, with the original name of 'All Saints day', and it is a festive day in places like Italy, France, Spain (no school!). However, since it is followed by the 'All Dead Day', which is November the 2th, at least in Southern Italy we have (had?) the tradition of spending one or even both of those two days visiting our dead in the cemetery. (The funny thing is that it is also an occasion to meet all your relatives that are alive there at the cemetery 😅 ). When I grew up, Halloween was only a thing in American movies, like lockers in schools or fat bikers with leather jackets over hairy arms. I think that nowadays the celebration is common in Italy too. Maybe not the trick or treat thing, but certainly witchy decorations in shops, some kids dressing up, parties where girls exploit the dressing up code to go around basically undressed. You know, traditional Halloween. 😄

Anyhow, I do not plan to do any Halloween related reading or activity. I even think I first read Trick or Treat by Barks on a March afternoon last year. 🤔
(On the other hand, I live in London now, and I see a some pumpkins smiling at me in my street...maybe I should start Halloweening a bit...)

In Portugal, we also went to the cemeteries at 1st November (and almost everybody ignores that the "Day of the Faithful Deceased"  is 2nd November); and was also the tradition of "pão por Deus" ("bread for God"), where groups of children went house to house asking for bread (and, at least in some interpretations, if you give bread to the children, your deceased relatives will went more quickly from Purgatory to Heaven - there is even some flavor of the Indulgences Question here; and, btw, the Catholic/Protestant schism was at one 31th October...), who (without the fantasies and the mischief...) were similar to the "trick or treat" (in Portugal, there is a story that this was after the earthquake of 1st November 1755, when many children become orphans, but similar traditions, even with similar names, exist in other Catholic countries).

[That Duckfan]

Growing up in a Dutch Catholic area, Halloween was a distinctly American tradition for me as well, though you do see more pumpkins with every passing year. The elderly will commemorate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (Nov 1+2), but you're unlikely to find anyone under the age of 70 involved with the tradition. Kids traditionally trick-or-treat on November 11th, the Feast of St. Martin, though they don't dress up. 11/11 is also the traditional kick-off of the carnival season (spelled carnaval over here), although events lie low until after Three Kings' Day (January 6). We have a rich carnival tradition here, a local offshoot of Rhenish/Cologne traditions. This is the time reserved for dressing up. Another name for carnival is fasting's eve, a remnant of the old Catholic fasting period, 40 days before Easter. Somewhat confusingly, another part of the country celebrates Burgundian carnival traditions, while a certain majority of Dutch people don't celebrate it at all, because they're Protestant. They might celebrate the Summer Carnival, an import from the (former) Dutch Caribbean possessions that's similar to Brazilian carnival, but that mainly happens in cities with large post-colonial populations.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

All this information about social rituals and festivities from around the world is always cool to discover.
But I don't understand the Dutch Carnival thing as explained by That Duckfan. Carnival is only one day**, so what does it mean that Dutch Carnival starts on 11/11? You have like three months of carnival?! That's not fair! 


[ **Some context for people unfamiliar with the notion, in case there were any in this international forum: The carnival ('carne vale' meant 'meat is allowed' in Latin), also known as mardi gras (French for 'Fat Tuesday'), is the last Tuesday before the forty days preceding Easter. In Christian tradition, it is the last day when you can eat whatever your want, before that forty day-long period of fasting called Lent (which is not actual fasting, of course, just symbolically not eating meat on Friday for those six weeks).
In the middle ages the Carnival was a day of public celebrations, where people were allowed to behave in unorthodox ways. The one day of the year were the society was upside down: poor people could pretend to be rich, rich people could pretend to be poor, priests and powerful men could be mocked, and so on. The dressing up tradition that we still have to this day comes from that. ] 

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Oct 31, 2020 17:34:21 GMT crazycatlord said:

Oct 31, 2020 2:58:05 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

In Portugal, we also went to the cemeteries at 1st November (and almost everybody ignores that the "Day of the Faithful Deceased"  is 2nd November); and was also the tradition of "pão por Deus" ("bread for God"), where groups of children went house to house asking for bread (and, at least in some interpretations, if you give bread to the children, your deceased relatives will went more quickly from Purgatory to Heaven - there is even some flavor of the Indulgences Question here; and, btw, the Catholic/Protestant schism was at one 31th October...), who (without the fantasies and the mischief...) were similar to the "trick or treat" (in Portugal, there is a story that this was after the earthquake of 1st November 1755, when many children become orphans, but similar traditions, even with similar names, exist in other Catholic countries).

That's interesting. So even the trick or treat thing must have roots much older than Protestantism.

I cannot remember any form of 'trick or treat' in any Italian tradition, although keep in mind that Italy is a politically young country putting together different regional cultures, so it could just be me not knowing enough. The closest thing that I can think of is that the Romans used to give lentils to kids on January the 6th, as a wish of good fortune. (Lentils were a symbol for money to them.) When the Romans became Christians, that tradition must have slowly turned into the Italian version of epiphany: on January the 6th a witch called Befana brings toys or sweet treats to kids. She is like a female Santa Claus, basically. The Catholic Church has retconed her as 'the woman who told the three kings how to find baby Jesus', but I guess that the whole witch thing comes from some older paganism. As for the lentils, we still serve them at the hyper-caloric New Years's Eve dinner, at least in the area where I come from, most probably as a continuation of that 'good luck' tradition. But by that point we have already eaten so disgustingly much that no-one ever actually eat them! 

[Matilda]

"Carnival" is in some places a pre-Lent season leading up to the day-before-Lent blow-out. I think in New Orleans, Louisiana, Carnival season begins on Three Kings Day, with the cake/bread with the prize inside. This doesn't mean that there's constant celebration throughout the period, but there is a gradual build-up to and preparation for the big Mardi Gras events.

My understanding is that trick-or-treating is a vestige of a very common form of celebration, where people (usually adults) traveled from house to house and performed in some way, singing songs or showing off costumes or doing little skits or whatever, and were rewarded with something festive to drink/eat. This happened at lots of different holidays in different ways. You can see how it's a natural thing to do, an alternative to celebrations where everyone in town gathers together. House-to-house Christmas caroling is the other vestige of this form of festivity in my setting. Not that common now, but it does happen in some locales.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Nov 1, 2020 14:30:55 GMT Matilda said:

 This happened at lots of different holidays in different ways. You can see how it's a natural thing to do, an alternative to celebrations where everyone in town gathers together. House-to-house Christmas caroling is the other vestige of this form of festivity in my setting. Not that common now, but it does happen in some locales.

In my region, and elsewhere in Southern Italy, we have (maybe I should say had) the zampognari, people going home to home announcing the coming of Christ playing the zampogna, the southern Italian version of the Scottish bagpipes. (Don't ask me why there are bagpipes in the extreme north and in the extreme south of Europe but none all in between... ) Unfortunately that tradition is disappearing, but I remember them playing in the streets around Christmas when I was a kid.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

In the end - without even realising - yesterday night I opened a Mike Mignola book and read a six page long story that seems perfect for Halloween. It's not Disney comics, but it's full on the web, so let me share it with you all:

hellboyfansinhell.tumblr.com/post/53548411560/evilpainapol-the-witch-and-her-soul-by-mike

[crazycatlord]

Nov 1, 2020 2:21:27 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

Oct 31, 2020 17:34:21 GMT crazycatlord said:

In Portugal, we also went to the cemeteries at 1st November (and almost everybody ignores that the "Day of the Faithful Deceased"  is 2nd November); and was also the tradition of "pão por Deus" ("bread for God"), where groups of children went house to house asking for bread (and, at least in some interpretations, if you give bread to the children, your deceased relatives will went more quickly from Purgatory to Heaven - there is even some flavor of the Indulgences Question here; and, btw, the Catholic/Protestant schism was at one 31th October...), who (without the fantasies and the mischief...) were similar to the "trick or treat" (in Portugal, there is a story that this was after the earthquake of 1st November 1755, when many children become orphans, but similar traditions, even with similar names, exist in other Catholic countries).

That's interesting. So even the trick or treat thing must have roots much older than Protestantism.

Reading the Portuguese Wikipedia article about the "Pão-por-Deus", some variants (specially in Coimbra) seems even more similar to Halloween that I thought:

translate.google.pt/translate?hl=pt-PT&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fpt.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FP%25C3%25A3o-por-Deus

" In this same city of Coimbra, where today [year 1963] we are, it is customary to walk groups of children on the streets, on October 31 and November 1 and 2, at nightfall, with a hollow pumpkin and holes cut out to make eyes, nose and mouth, as if it were a skull, and with a candle stump lit inside, to give it a more macabre look. " [ 30 ]

" In Coimbra the pedestal mentions« Bolinhos, bolinhós », and the group brings an empty pumpkin with two holes to show the eyes of a character and a candle lit inside [...]" [ 31 ]

[Spectrus]

Nov 1, 2020 2:06:10 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

All this information about social rituals and festivities from around the world is always cool to discover.
But I don't understand the Dutch Carnival thing as explained by That Duckfan. Carnival is only one day**, so what does it mean that Dutch Carnival starts on 11/11? You have like three months of carnival?! That's not fair! 


[ **Some context for people unfamiliar with the notion, in case there were any in this international forum: The carnival ('carne vale' meant 'meat is allowed' in Latin), also known as mardi gras (French for 'Fat Tuesday'), is the last Tuesday before the forty days preceding Easter. In Christian tradition, it is the last day when you can eat whatever your want, before that forty day-long period of fasting called Lent (which is not actual fasting, of course, just symbolically not eating meat on Friday for those six weeks).
In the middle ages the Carnival was a day of public celebrations, where people were allowed to behave in unorthodox ways. The one day of the year were the society was upside down: poor people could pretend to be rich, rich people could pretend to be poor, priests and powerful men could be mocked, and so on. The dressing up tradition that we still have to this day comes from that. ] 

They call it the fifth season here in Germany, and it started today at 11:11. This means that (under normal circumstances) the fools' guilds would start their actions, which then eventually culminates in the final carnival week and ends on Ash Wednesday. Most people wouldn't participate in much of the fooling around until the apex, so to speak.