Tuesday - Day of the Dead

This year, Halloween--also known as the Day of the Dead and All Souls' Day falls on Tuesday, with the following day, celebrated as All Saints' Day in countless cultures around the world. With these thoughts in mind, I made myself comfortable in my porch swing to await the Halloween tricksters and my thoughts began drifting into a gray fog...

All Saints' Day. All Hallow's Day, November the first. To celebrate a saint - all of the saints. It was in the year 610 that Pope Boniface IV pulled the Pantheon at Rome up to the level of a Christian church, and dedicated it to all martyrs. Prior to this, the Pantheon was a temple dedicated to all pagan gods. The Pantheon was erected in Rome by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus Caesar. Now, and since the seventh century it has been used as a Christian church. It also serves as a burial ground. All Saints' Day was originally celebrated on May the first, but was changed to the first of November in the year 834.

Since that time, it has followed All Souls' Day or All Hallows' Eve or Halloween, also called "Nutcrack Night" and "Holy Eve." It originates from the ancient Pagan Festival of the Dead on which night the souls of the dead were expected to return for a long-awaited meal with their families. The family lighted the way, by setting candles in the window. They set another place at table for the arrival, and children plied their villages begging food for the dead, which was later donated to charity.

Today, we see lighted Jack-O-Lanterns replacing the candles in windows. Children go from house to house announcing "Trick-or-Treat, Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat!" And as is the custom in Jewish families: to set another place at table for Elijah, and place a candle in the window for his welcome - the similarity is striking.

Halloween. A night for reliving ancient customs such as bobbing for apples, cracking nuts, donning costumes and finding one's lover by using various rites. It is the time for witches and warlocks, ghosts and goblins, vampires and ghouls, skeletons and creepy-crawlers.

Halloween. A time to celebrate all of those happenings which go "bump in the night" and have been bumping culture after culture, goup after group for - well, for longer than any of us have been around!

Halloween. A modern-day happening torn from the pages of the very distant past with deep roots into the unknown, unexplained and often frightening beliefs of those souls long since gone.

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