Sunday, October 31, 2004
31 October
Its Halloween, a new festival in Italy, and felt to be a little too pagan. Schools in Sicily are being paid to avoid the mention of it, in the hope that the traditional All Saints Day customs are kept alive. Children receiving sweets from the spirits on All Hallows Eve, troop off en famille to the cemetery the next morning to thank the dead people for yesterday’s goodies.
Apparently Halloween has taken root in the more Americanised north of the country, but here in Naples its possible to buy lots of cheap plastic rubbish that only serves to make a few people very rich. A triumph of marketing over substance.
Like all feast days here, the talk is more of the inevitable family meal than anything else. I chatted to a friend of mine today and in reply to the question, what will you do on your day off tomorrow?, the answer came, ‘My mother is cooking many fish, so we will eat them’ No visits to the garden centre here. In fact when I asked what he was doing tonight, the answer came that he was taking his mother shopping for the food to be consumed tomorrow. It seems more than ever the case that Neapolitan mothers spend their lives in the kitchen preparing vast quanitities of food.
Its Halloween, a new festival in Italy, and felt to be a little too pagan. Schools in Sicily are being paid to avoid the mention of it, in the hope that the traditional All Saints Day customs are kept alive. Children receiving sweets from the spirits on All Hallows Eve, troop off en famille to the cemetery the next morning to thank the dead people for yesterday’s goodies.
Apparently Halloween has taken root in the more Americanised north of the country, but here in Naples its possible to buy lots of cheap plastic rubbish that only serves to make a few people very rich. A triumph of marketing over substance.
Like all feast days here, the talk is more of the inevitable family meal than anything else. I chatted to a friend of mine today and in reply to the question, what will you do on your day off tomorrow?, the answer came, ‘My mother is cooking many fish, so we will eat them’ No visits to the garden centre here. In fact when I asked what he was doing tonight, the answer came that he was taking his mother shopping for the food to be consumed tomorrow. It seems more than ever the case that Neapolitan mothers spend their lives in the kitchen preparing vast quanitities of food.
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