Pumpkins, pointy hats, spiders and webs, even if here in Italy it's not a traditional way to celebrate the last night of October, everything around seems to talk about Halloween! ^_^
Here in my area (in Tuscany, a region in the middle of Italy) we always used to remember our beloved deceased relatives going to cemetary to leave flowers and prayers during the October 31th. Also today, the cemetaries are full of people who are visiting the tombs to honor their beloved ones . Tomorrow it's the November 1th, the Ognissanti's day (the Day of All Saints) and here it's an holiday. Today and tomorrow there will be some catholic masses for the believers, but it's not so common to go there and so I can say that the most common ritual for today is just to go to the cemetary. When I was a child, my family used to go around in different cementaries to "visit" every our beloved ones and our children left some flowers on their tombs. It was way to remember our ancestries, especially because my mom used to talk to us about who they were.
Since about 10 years, after many many movies about the eve of Halloween full of children who go around for the "trick or treat", also here people started to wear costumes during the night of the October 31th! I think we italians are always ready to make a party and it's good ^_^ "Rituals" can change time to time and looking around I really think that it's nice to see children (and adults, sure!) go around wearing scary masks having fun.
Me and my hubby will wear nothing strange (maybe), but my daughter has her costume for tonight: the witch!
I'll take some pics of her later, but now I couln't resist to show you her hat!
See ya later
Silvia
