Yesterday me and my boyfriend made a cute Halloween pumpkin ^^ and I called it Ragamuffin like Roman Dirge’s character, because it’s a vampire-pumpkin. I know maybe it’s a bit early to prepare for Halloween but I will be alone on that night and I really wanted to enjoy my home-made pumpkin also on this Hallowe'en.
Last week I found in a book-shop in Venice an interesting book called “Halloween tales” and it’s a collection of horror-gothic tales both of XIX and XX centuries.
In the book I found an interesting introduction to Halloween tradition that fascinated me, of course. I knew Hallowe'en, (All-Hallow-even, the eve of All-Hallow-Day) better knew as Samhain in ancient times, was a Celts tradition that has been carried in North America by Irish immigrants and then has spread recently in all other countries.
I knew also that following the tradition, on that night the dead people walk on earth searching for everything they desired in life, that is represented by candies and that children use to wear Halloween costumes in order to disguise themselves and seem dead. But that’s not all.
There’s also something that I can feel very close to my perception of things and that everybody may feel, I guess.
Halloween is the end of the Summer season, when light and food let the populations live better than in Winter. After Halloween, November brings darkness, cold and hard work for everyone to survive and in that past time when electric light and comforts didn’t exist, ghosts seem to be everywhere and it was easier to be tricked by fears and terror of our minds.
Well, it’s not something I can really feel directly of course. I have electric light and a house where I can live. I don’t have even a field to work on. But somewhat, this seems familiar.
November for me is the darkest and the longest of all months in the year. October seems to be somewhat connected to summer’s light and atmosphere, but November cut it all away and replace everything with a heavy atmosphere where days seem always night.
It’s not that I don’t like that kind of romantic atmosphere, but getting used to it is different. Somewhat my feelings turn more complicated and everything seems harder to face. Darkness conquers my mind and I can do nothing but surrender to it and become weaker.
That’s all I wanted to say about it, but if you want to know more about Halloween celebration, on wikipedia there’s a very interesting article about it.
For Italian readers I advice the book “Racconti di Halloween – per non dormire questa notte” (edito da Einaudi, a cura di Fabiano Massimi) and for everyone all the tales written by Edgar Allan Poe, in particular my favourite ones (I already wrote them on a precedent article so I won't repeat them), by Lovecraft, Maupassant, Montague Rhodes James, Arthur Conan Doyle, William F. Benson, A. Bierce and all the most famous horror-gothic writers.
A scary Hallowe’en to everyone.
