Hello and welcome to another blog post! I’m Celia, your EDI Student Librarian, and each month I post about a new topic pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion. This month’s focus is on Halloween and Harvest celebrations around the world. Did you know that North American Halloween traditions are only one of many holidays that take place at the end of October? If you grew up in Canada or the United States, you likely went trick-or-treating and carved pumpkins, while other cultures have their own traditions that celebrate the harvest season, remember the dead, and bring fun family and community events to the season. Today I’m going to highlight four traditions coming from Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines, and Haiti.
Ireland: Samhain
Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival that serves as the origin of modern Halloween celebrations. The festival was celebrated at the midpoint between the fall and winter equinoxes, signaling the end of the harvest period. Ancient practices included prayer, feasting, and relighting family hearths with a flame taken from a community bonfire. Samhain is also where the practice of dressing up in Halloween costumes originates. Celtic people believed that the boundary between the realms of the living and the dead became crossable during Samhain. In order to prevent ancestors, fairies, or other beings from visiting and kidnapping them, they dressed as monsters or animals to disguise themselves. The practice of carving pumpkins began in the middle ages as the holiday progressed and evolved.
Today, Samhain continues to be celebrated by those following the Wicca religion. Wiccan celebrations of Samhain incorporate many of the ancient practices, as well as including new Wiccan traditions, such as honouring nature and ancestors. Another group celebrating Samhain today are Celtic Reconstructionists, a group of Pagans who seek to revive traditional Celtic traditions in modern Paganism. You can learn more about Samhain here.
Mexico: Día de los Muertos
Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a two-day holiday celebrated primarily in Mexico. Unlike Halloween practices that view the dead and the spiritual as taboo, scary, or dangerous, Día de los Muertos celebrates life and death with a positive outlook.
On Día de los Muertos, the souls of deceased relatives and loved ones return to the realm of the living for twenty-four hours. The holiday is a reunification with departed family members that aims to honour and remember them. Families create ofrendas, or offerings, which include flowers, photos of departed loved ones, and the favourite foods of loved ones. Ofrendas allow living family members to remember departed loved ones, as well as encouraging their souls to visit and join in celebration.
Souls return at different points throughout Día de los Muertos. On November 1st at 12am, the spirits of children return. On November 2 and 12am, the spirits of adults return. Then, at noon on November 2, a grand finale and public celebration occurs with parades, community gatherings, and visits to the graves of loved ones.
Día de los Muertos is a unique holiday that offers an alternative view on life and death. It invites us to consider the different ways that people and cultures can understand what it means to die. If you would like to celebrate Día de los Muertos in Vancouver this year, a number of events will be happening throughout the city, which you can explore here.
The Philippines: Pangangaluluwa
Pangangaluluwa is a Filipino tradition sometimes referred to as “souling.” On the night of October 31, adults and children dress up in ghost costumes and travel throughout their villages, visiting each home and pretending to be ancestral souls lost in purgatory. The travelers perform songs about saints and lost souls. They also collect alms from each household, which include money and rice-based snacks known as Kakanin. Those who experienced Pangangaluluwa as children recall being woken up at midnight, excitedly looking out their windows, and watching as the traveling souls sing and wave at them.
Pangangaluluwa is a hybrid holiday that brings together Roman Catholic traditions and traditional Filipino faith practices. The idea of purgatory and individual souls comes from Catholicism, while the acknowledgement that ancestors continue to influence the present comes from pre-colonial Filipino beliefs. Pangangaluluwa has been cited as a significant cultural practice in the postcolonial era: While Catholic missions and Spanish colonialism eradicated many traditional Filipino practices, Pangangaluluwa has survived, in part because it allowed people to preserve traditional beliefs while incorporating new ones.
In the early 20th century, Pangangaluluwa saw the height of its popularity, until the practice died down during the 1940s as a result of food insecurity and the Marcos dictatorship. Today, some Filipino advocates are reviving the tradition, including Eric Dedace of the Sariaya Tourism Council. You can read more about the holiday and the current revival work happening in the Philippines here.
Haiti: Fèt Gede
Fèt Gede, or the Haitian Day of the Dead, is a variation of Day of the Dead celebrations that incorporates the African tradition of vodou. Like All Saints Day, it is celebrated on November 1 and November 2 each year. The celebrations are loud and extravagant, and generate large crowds of people each year in the Haitian city of Port-au-Prince.
The primary component of Fèt Gede is a parade of vodou practitioners, or vodouwizan, who have performed a ritual uniting them with the dead. The gede refers to a deceased friend or relative of a vodouwizan who the practitioner has contacted through a ceremony and invited to possess their body for the duration of Fèt Gede. While possessed, the vodouwizan wear white, black and purple attire, cover their face in white powder, and carry a walking stick and a bottle filled with alcohol and hot peppers— as the gede are known to love hot peppers.
The vodouwizan cover several miles while dancing and entertaining the crowd, until they arrive at the cemetery, where they continue to sing, dance, and visit graves. The celebrations are a loud and boisterous way of paying respect to deceased loved ones. Additionally, Vodou’s African origin points to ancestral traditions that survived their history of enslavement and colonialism. You can learn more about Fèt Gede and other Haitian traditions here.
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed learning about Halloween and Harvest traditions from around the world! Our globe contains such a vast diversity of cultural practices, faith traditions, and ways of having fun and remembering the dead. As you participate in your own traditions this month— whether joyful or somber, spooky or friendly— I hope you enjoy yourself and stay safe. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next month with another blog post!
Web Resources Referenced:
Day of The Dead 2024 Events & Parties in Vancouver. (2024). AllEvents. https://allevents.in/vancouver/day-of-the-dead
Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos). (n.d.). Day of the Dead. Retrieved October 1, 2024, from https://dayofthedead.holiday/
Fèt Gede—The Haitian Day of the Dead. (2020, February 1). Visit Haiti. https://visithaiti.com/festivals-events/fet-gede-haitian-day-of-the-dead/
Samhain ‑ Traditions, Halloween, Wicca. (2024, September 27). History. https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/samhain
Woolsey, B. (2022, October 24). The Disappearing Philippine Tradition of “Souling” for Rice Cakes. Atlas Obscura. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/philippine-halloween-traditions
Scholarly Resources:
Brandes, S. H. (2006). Skulls to the living, bread to the dead: The day of the dead in mexico and beyond. Blackwell Pub. [Available at UBC Library]
Rogers, N., & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Halloween: From pagan ritual to party night (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195146912.001.0001 [Available at UBC Library]
Santino, J. (1998). The hallowed eve: Dimensions of culture in a calendar festival in northern ireland. The University Press of Kentucky. [Available at UBC Library]