More than just a bag full of candies

I suppose when you think of it, I cannot picture my South African
mother in law dressing this way.....



Has anyone ever asked you what the purpose of Halloween is? I have to admit, it is not something I have ever thought about before, well there was the time that I was asked by Fatima and Abdul, my Sudanese friends in Canada. The best answer I could come up with was that Halloween is a day that we dress up in costumes and collect bags full of candies from our neighbours. As the words left my mouth I already knew that the answer would not be well received....

A couple of days ago my new friend from Uganda asked me the same question and once again I was at a loss. As I described to him that adults dress up in silly costumes just for fun I could see his face looking more and more bewildered. Are North Americans really as strange as what his facial expression was suggesting?
I decided it was time to finally look into the true meaning of Halloween and I was surprised with what I found. When in doubt check out Wikipedia:

"Halloween is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)".^[1] The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end".^[1] A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced Kálan Gái av).

The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes^[2] regarded as the "Celtic New Year".^[3]
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family's ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm"

Wow, so who knew, and all this time I took for granted that Halloween actually has roots in history and simply thought it was a day to collect garbage bags full of candy from strangers. I must say that Halloween is a non event here in Rome, not a single child was seen running around in costumes, and the only people I saw celebrating were in the tourist areas. I also noticed that within that group people were dressed rather modestly with a simple witches hat on, certainly not going above and beyond like my good friend Crystaleen who every year digs through her Mr. Dress-Up style box of Halloween dress up goodies. Some years I cannot even recognize her! I wish that Crystaleen were here right now to show these Roman's how it's done!

Happy Halloween everyone!