Across The Savannah

Fall is a great season, and I love seeing pumpkins, shocks of corn, and colorful clusters of chrysanthemums. Of course, Halloween is a big part of autumn pageantry. Ask any kid if he's going trick or treating Friday night, and you'll see one excited kid.

Growing up in Lincolnton, my chief memories of Halloween are coming home with a bag of candy after trick or treating and feeling human eyeballs (grapes) in a coal-black house of horrors at Lincoln High. I never gave it much thought otherwise.

My sister, Brenda, remembers how my cousin, Ronnie Walker, and I took the whole box of bagged treats from a house on Sunrise Drive. My sister, Deb, remembers the Jaycettes's haunted house, how some locals stole pumpkins and burst them in the highway, and how pranksters rolled yards with toilet paper. A time for tricks, too. That's Halloween.

Like other holidays, we tend to forget Halloween's origin, and it's a serious one we inherited from the Europeans. "Halloween" comes from All Hallows' Even, the evening of All Hallows' Day, known also as All Saints' Day. It was a spring day of religious festivities in northern European Pagan traditions until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved it from May 13 to November 1.

Pumpkins holding a candle —jacko' lanterns—are also a carryover from Europe where carved turnips or rutabagas held candles. The Celts made a "head" from vegetables to frighten away superstitions. Here in America, our ancestors found pumpkins readily available, much larger, and easier to carve than turnips. (Pumpkins, surprisingly, are considered a fruit, botanically, since they hold seeds.)

The name "jack-o'-lantern" goes back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer. A clever fellow, Stingy Jack tricked the devil into climbing a tree and trapped him by carving a cross into the trunk. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night with a candle inside a hollowed turnip.

Centuries later, another wave of immigrants brings their fall tradition to us. On the surface, the Mexican custom of El Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — sounds a lot like our Halloween. Its name is spooky and the celebration starts at midnight October 31 but goes through November 2. In most localities, November 1 is set aside for the remembrance of deceased infants and children, the angelitos (little angels). November 2 honors those who died as adults.

El Día de los Muertos reigns as one of Mexico's biggest holidays, and celebrations are becoming more common here in areas with a large Hispanic population. The Day of the Dead's origins are distinctly Mexican and go back to the Aztecs whose Lady of the Dead goddess oversaw a month-long summer celebration. After the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, Catholicism became the dominant religion and the customs intertwined with the Christian commemoration of All Saints' Day taking place November 1.

Halloween and El Día de los Muertos thus have different origins, and their attitudes toward death differ. We mostly avoid talking about death in the United States, whereas remembering deceased loved ones is traditional among many cultures. Such celebrations go back as far as the glory days of ancient Egypt when departed souls were honored during the great festival of Osiris. Halloween festivities tout the fact that death is to be feared. But in El Día de los Muertos, the living celebrate memories of those who have passed on. Not a bad tradition by any stretch.

Mexicans feel it's easier for departed souls to visit the living during the Day of the Dead, so people go to cemeteries to talk with the souls of the departed. They build altars holding the departed's photos, favorite foods, beverages, and possessions. Vigils are held, and families tidy up their loved one's graves. Often, they sit around the grave and share food and stories about their loved ones.

When my sisters and I were kids, the last place we'd want to be on Halloween was in a cemetery, but things change when you grow up. Halloween two years ago, I took a "ghost" tour of a large cemetery in Columbia, Elmwood Cemetery. Throughout the grounds, Jack-o'- lanterns had been placed on tombstones to effect a ghostly atmosphere and refreshments were served. Hosts of Historical Columbia, dressed in antebellum gowns, told stories about the deceased as we stood in a circle around their graves. There it was. Right before my eyes. Halloween and The Day of the Dead, unwittingly intertwined, just as the original holidays were so long ago.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol @earthlink.net