Halloween USA vs Italy.
credit: Luisa Scarlata
“Trick or treat?” children of all America scream happy on the night of October 31, amused and dressed like witches, phantoms and vampires. Because this is what, according to the tradition, dead people do during Halloween night: come back to earth to make jokes, sometimes very scary ones, to lucky living people. So everybody must be absolutely ready. You know what I mean: ghost you, ghost us. Therefore, let’s go with giant pumpkins, cakes, candies, every kind of costumes and camouflages, home, table and garden decorations (and what gorgeous ones!) since the end of September.
From the East to the West coast, traversing Ohio and Illinois, Nebraska and Colorado up to the smallest towns of Iowa like the delightful Grinnell, Halloween reigns supreme. Everywhere. In rich’s houses like in poor’s ones: after all, as Steve Jobs was used to say, isn’t death the only really democratic thing of life? Drugstores, pharmacies, supermarkets, discounts (in the US there are many “Everything at only 99 cents” places, and in the United States “all” means truly “all”) have a giant department consecrated to the beloved recurrence. Every shop window invites you to get ready for the darkest night of the year, every garden of the sunny California or the beautiful Orange County is dressed for the occasion, with tiny ghosts lean on the trees and enormous spiders coming out from the (super neat) plants.
Halloween is for kids but adults loves to be involved too. It’s another excuse to celebrate, to stay together, to express. Because exteriorizing is the thing that americans love more than any other. Politic, charity, sport: americans display their thoughts, their feelings, without any fear to be judged or hit from different minded.
In Italy the commemoration of dead people is on November 2. With a “tiny” difference: in 1630 catholic religion banished any kind of pagan ritual related to this occasion, removing any sort of fun and cheerfulness from this feast day. Then, since a few years ago, Italy rose against that, giving new life to an “italian style” Halloween that, ironically, can’t be more sad. Any legend, any magic, any poetry is gone. Above all children are being put aside (in Italy they would “receive” a lot of doors in the face if they just would try to imitate their american friends!). Italian Halloween, at the end, is just a series of disco nights in costume like Carnival, an excuse for italians “bamboccioni” to get drunk and make merry (perhaps because of the negligence of a country and a society that doesn’t help to come out from the condition of “eternal child”?).
“Trick or treat?” children of all America scream happy. This is Halloween: until italians will not be ready to open their doors, definitely a festival that it’s not for them.