How fun, Judy! Sounds like a great time. Thanks for the rec.

It really is the way we should remember our dead – with reverence but with joyful remembrance for their existence and lives lived.

And Auguri for your Saint’s Day today!

I can imagine your surprise. I’d never celebrated this day before, either.

Not sure what is going on here for halloween. IN NZ we don’t celebrate it either (we do have guy fawkes day which is v cool though on Nov 5th).

Day of the dead (nov 2) is a BIG day around here. My MIL just went to the cemetery today – to avoid the crowds that will be there on Monday! Hmm wonder if they will be open ALL day (usually it is monrngs only) to accommodate the masses.

Thanks, V. Hope you and Oscar had a nice day, too.

In Italy, 2 November is a day they ‘celebrate’ the lives of departed family members and friends which in my view is far more appropriate. No plastic rubbish in the shops, no unpleasant kids throwing eggs at people who won’t succumb to their ‘trick or treat’ blackmail. Just a visit to graves to place flowers, and a family meal in remembrance. Much more dignified, and it actually means something important as opposed to being just another excuse for shops to make money and kids to dress up and eat too much.

I very much hope Italy doesn’t follow in the USA’s shoes but sticks with its own, much more appropriate, cultural celebrations.

I never really thought about having one or the other and I agree the Nov 2 holiday is very tasteful. I don’t think a celebration on Oct 31 is meant to take the place of that.

My dear friend Kathryn got all excited for Halloween — made special treats, decorated, her classroom, etc. She even pulled the skeleton out of the science room and posted him (it?) next to the front door (I don’t remember whether she decorated him or not).

Oh heavens cultural misunderstandings!!! when the teachers arrived, they were FURIOUS with her and insisted she return the skeleton to its rightful place right away and take down all the other decorations as well. How DARE she be so disrespectful of the dead?

Because, of course, Halloween, which is just a secular holiday to us, is really All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day, which is a very somber day in many European countries (I know it was in Hungary), one where the family makes the pilgrimage to the cemetery to decorate the tombs of deceased family members and pray for them. There was no way in the world to begin to share the American experience without deeply offending the Hungarians.

I wonder if today things might be different. This was in the early 1990s, and things certainly get more commercialized and Americanized (think Christmas) as time passes. But at least then, in that place, at that time, there was no inkling that there would ever be an opening up to an American-style secular celebration. (I say this all because i can imagine small Italian communities being much the same, very conservative. I wouldn’t dare try to do something like that at my in-laws’ for example!)
 
Oh, no … your poor friend! I don’t know about other places in Italy/Europe but they told me that they celebrate “The Dead’s Day” on November 2. We were at church last week and they devoted more time to it and afterwards many people told us they were going to the cemetery. Thanks for sharing that story… just goes to show how an innocent act can be misconstrued!