Several ways to celebrate spirits around the world
By Erin Emerson
Halloween at Santa Clara is the night when many drop their inhibitions -- and in some cases a good portion of their clothes -- and take to the streets. But among the throng of cop uniforms (both real and synthetic) it is difficult to remember that not everyone honors the dead the way we do in America.
To begin, there is merry old England, where effigies of Guy Fawkes (who tried to blow up the House of Lords in 1605) are burned in giant bonfires on Nov. 5. To be fair, this is not a celebration of Halloween, but of Guy Fawkes Day. The festival did not receive approval from the Christian church, who believed it was an excuse for witches to make trouble. The day eventually lessened in pagan rituals, becoming a day for children to play pranks.
Gangs of rowdy boys would wander around taking doors off their hinges, moving people's horses to different fields, piling manure against doors and throwing all manner of rotten vegetables against neighbors' cottages. That makes toilet papering look tame.
Latin America celebrates their own version of Halloween with DÃa de los Muertos, a celebration where families gather at the grave sites of their relatives with food, sweets and even tequila to offer to the dead. They often stay in the graveyard overnight and some even bring a mariachi band along for entertainment. During the day, great parades of people carry an open coffin with a live person inside down the street as vendors throw candy and flowers into the casket.
In Southern Italy families will set the table for a feast and then go to mass for the entire day, leaving the house open so that spirits can enter and enjoy. If the family returns and the food has not disappeared, they are said to have bad luck for the next year. Similarly, in Poland, residents leave their doors and windows open, welcoming visiting souls. In Sicily, children go to bed knowing that the dead will rise from their graves to deliver candy, cookies and gifts (much like Santa Claus).
In some countries, honoring the dead is a solemn and even dark holiday. For example, in many Southeast Asian countries, the festival of the dead is a time when family members meet to light candles and give offerings to the spirits of their ancestors. On the third day of the Japanese Obon Festival, entire communities will perform the Bon Odori, a hypnotic slow dance that moves in circles.
In China people celebrate the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts by burning fruit or paper money to comfort the dead who were not properly honored and are "hungry" for affection. It was believed that a spirit who wasn't properly honored after death could turn vengeful.
Scottish superstitions are perhaps the darkest of all. To honor Scotland's ancient practice of burning suspected witches, people burn effigies of witches on a great bonfire. The culmination of these ceremonial fires is when a dummy of the Shandy Dan (an old woman) is wheeled in and cast into the flames by a gathering of villagers.
Last, but most definitely not least, is the Roman holiday of Lemuria when a person would circle a house barefoot, at midnight, with a mouthful of dried black beans, spitting them out one by one as ghost bait and chanting, "with these I redeem myself and mine." Once they had traversed the entire house in a circle, they would wash their hands and beat brass pans together as a goodbye to unwanted spirits.
Our skanky costumes don't seem so strange now do they?
Contact Erin Emerson at eemerson@scu.edu.