On Halloween this Thursday children will dress as little ghosts and goblins and travel from home to home with the threat of a trick being perpetrated against the homeowner if a treat is not provided the ghastly visitors.
But there are other rituals and traditions connected with the last day of October around the world.
The “Day of the Dead” ritual celebrated by indigenous people of Mexico and many other Latin American countries is roughly equivalent to what North Americans call Halloween.
Traditionally, family and friends of departed loved ones gather on October 31st, Nov. 1st, and 2nd, which is roughly connected with the Catholic, Hallowmas: All Hallows Eve, and All Saints Day.
Private alters, called ofrendas, dedicated to the dead are erected and usually adorned with skulls made of sugar and marigolds along with the favorite food or drink of the loved one which are brought to the grave site as gifts.
The holiday can trace its origin back to pre-Columbian days and may have its roots in the indigenous Aztec festival of the goddess, Mictecacihuatl, and may go back 2,500 to 3,000 years. In those days, a human skull adorned most homes, which represented the cycle of death and rebirth.
Today, Mexican children and those within many Latin-American Countries as well as a few in Europe, will make an alter to invite the spirits of dead children to come back for a visit. Toys are brought to the gravesites of children. The next day, Nov. 1st is All Saints Day when the spirits of dead adults come to visit and jars of tequila are left for adult spirits at gravesites. Nov. 2nd is All Souls Day, when families decorate the tombs and graves of dead relatives.
There is a plethora of skulls, skeletons and marigolds everywhere throughout the community for the three-day ritual.
The celebration is an odd mix of Catholicism, voodoo and the occult, which even the Mexican and Central American Catholic church participates and is in some ways reminiscent of Mardi gras in New Orleans.
To the European and western culture, the ritual may have its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would build bonfires to ward off ghosts who were said to roam the countryside every October 31st.
The wearing of costumes on this holiday is universal for all kinds of reasons, depending on the culture, but there is a commonality at the root of them all.
Early North American protestant settlers from Europe did not celebrate the Catholic rituals and so Halloween or All Hallows Eve, in New England in particular, was not celebrated for many years, However in the southern states, it was practiced, but more as a harvest event or Autumn festival.
By the mid to late 1800’s with the immigration of millions of people from a wide cross section of Europe and Asia, the Halloween we would recognize today began to take root.
By the early 20th century the religious overtones had given way to a more secular holiday of dress up and pranks.
In Mohawk this is the feast of the dead called; Ohkhí:we