Halloween 2014, Tutti i Santi, Festa dei Morti.

This year for Halloween I got a nice pumpkin well several really and carved the big one.
I have been doing this since I was a little kid 50 odd years. I put the pumpkins on the balcony, we are not expecting any kids at all, since our building is mostly older adults with no kids. There are some kids but I do not know if they are around tonight. Of course tomorrow is the Dia de los Muertos, the day of the dead 1 November, a big tradition in Mexico and in many countries like Poland. Two countries where I have lived and saw their traditions. Very interesting, in Mexico people who got married on November 1 put skeletons and coffins on their wedding cakes. Tombs in cemeteries were ornately decorated with a multitude of flowers and candles. In Poland thousands of flickering lights would decorate family tombs and everyone went to visit the dead in the day time and also at night, the Cemeteries would be ablaze with candle light, quite lovely and a little spooky because of the many big old trees everywhere casting shadows. There was no Halloween in China or in Italy too foreign a concept, same for Egypt or Jordan. The concept of Halloween is very North American.

Here are some photos of the season.

Citrouilles 2014 

By the way for those who might wonder how do you say Halloween in French, well you say 

L'Halloween, simple yes?

Here are other photos of our neighbourhood

Our neighbours pumpkins 

Here is our pumpkin for this year, next to the Chicago Drake Hotel ceramic pumpkin I bought in 1994 with the 3 little pumpkin of this year, including the blue gray one called Sweetmeat pumpkin.

Halloween in Rome

What are you doing on this Halloween night? We went to a concert at the Auditorium Renzo Piano to hear 3 works by Russian composers played by the Orchestra of the Accademia Santa Cecilia, the best orchestra in Italy basically. The concert was over by 08:15 pm just in time for dinner in Rome. When we got out of the auditorium near the Tiber river, there was a definite chill in the air almost winter like. The auditorium is located on the Via Flaminia and this area is just below a hill in a flat area, the river bends at this point and you feel the chill.

Halloween is not a holiday in Italy, it is unknown and considered pagan by the Vatican. People do not dress up and no one carves a pumpkin, they eat them instead in soups or stuff ravioli with pumpkin, it is very good by the way.

I carved my pumpkin, I ordered one from our fruit and veg seller, I told him I wanted a big one as big as he could find at the warehouse. I also bought a second one which Will carved for the office party on Friday. Here the holiday is November 01 which is all Saints Day when people remember their dead and place candles on their graves. I took pictures of my pumkin and places one of those candles in a container which is usually used to light a grave.

Of course this being Halloween, I read an interesting story today about St-Dominic and those fun Dominican friars. They use to be in charge of the Inquisition in Rome, devising all manners of exquisite tortures to make people repent for their heresy against the Pope before burning them alive on a public square, in Rome that was Campo di Fiori. The most famous person to be burned there after years of torture, is Giordano Bruno, 1450, his statue dominates the Piazza. To this day the Vatican wants it pulled down, the argument, he deserved his fate because he questioned the authority of the Pope to act as a temporal sovereign.

Another famous person who also fell into the hands of those Dominican friar was Galileo, who claimed that the Earth was A) not flat, B) was not the centre of the universe but rotated around the Sun.
Galileo had to recant and apologize to the Pope for his errors, everyone knows the Earth is flat and is at the centre of the Universe, so say the Vatican. It took Jean Paul II to admit that the Church was wrong, only 500 years later.

This year is the Anniversary of the invention of the telescope, so the Vatican decided to have a special exhibit on Galileo, now declared to be one of the great Catholic scientist in the service of God. The Vatican explains today that, Galileo got into trouble because, some priest misunderstood what he was saying at the time. A simple misunderstanding, no harm done.

So there you go, that is my Halloween stories from Rome. Stay clear of those Dominican friars in dark alleys, near the Pantheon that is where their HQ is located at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.