Trick or treating

Halloween is celebrated on the night of 31st October and in the Celtic language it means “The Vigil of Every Saint”: feast of death and rebirth. It is generally attributed to countries such as England, Ireland, the United States, Australia, although it would be more appropriate to consider it a celebration common to the peoples of Europe. On the night between 31st October and 1st November, people dress up as gnomes, monsters, witches and walking around the streets of the cities they knock on the doors of houses asking with the typical phrase: Trick or treating There gift of sweets or some change.

But what do the Celts have to do with the Halloween party? An ancient myth tells of the meeting between Dagda, the father of all the gods, and Cailleach: from their harmonious union was born the power of the gods, from which all creation had its origin. Their meeting took place on the day of Samhain, the 1st November, which according to the Celtic calendar, based on the moon phases, marked the beginning of the winter period, a symbol of death and rebirth at the same time. This winter period coincided between October and November when these ancient tribes prepared to shelter their livestock indoors to ensure their survival in the cold season: this was the period of Samhain. Samhain is a day unrelated to time and space in which two worlds meet, the earthly and the spiritual: it is the beginning of the dark half of the year but also the bright half in the Other World.

People love to disguise themselves, thus resuming an ancient practice of ritual disguise used by shamans who, taking the form of supernatural beings, put themselves in communication with spiritual reality. The pumpkin, which we see these days on display in the shop windows, emptied, carved, with a funny and disturbing sneer together or lit inside by a candle? Important traditions are mixed with funny stories and ancient rituals are flanked by the games of the festival populated by ghosts, skeletons, witches, fairies, goblins joking, dancing, evoking the spirits of the earth. The origin of the illuminated pumpkin, called Jack of the Lantern, is contained instead, in an amusing Irish story about a great drinking man and his meeting with the devil. Witches and monsters are the characters who live again on Halloween night.