What Halloween is? Which are its historical and cultural basis? And finally…What Halloween MEANS? I’d like to put these questions to those Italian people who celebrated Halloween on Wednesday night. I’m quite sure that the great majority would not answer the questions. I don’t want to seem a polemic girl, but I firmly believe that if you celebrate something, you have to know what it is and what it means.
Have a look at what the English Wikipedia says about this holiday: it’s observed in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Ireland and in Canada. There are clearly no links with the Italian tradition. So, why should we celebrate it in Italy? I can’t remember the scent of this holiday in my childhood, just because when I was a child Halloween was simply a word that the English teacher taught us. For this reason, even now that I’m grown up, this holiday doesn’t mean nothing to me. I absolutely don’t want to say that Halloween has no meaning in itself, but that it has no meaning in our culture.
And yet, in the last few years, this holiday has been imported in Italy too. My question is: why? Are there cultural reasons behind this? I mean, if it were celebrate by Anglo-Saxon people living in Italy, I wouldn’t have any problem. But the fact is that it isn’t a necessity of some foreigners who don’t want to loose their cultural identity; Italian people celebrate this holiday as it were an Italian one! But the saddest thing is that the main reason why this holiday has been imported is for economic speculation. I read an article taken from Messaggero.it: it says that Halloween is celebrated in Italy, above all because of the great business –sales and parties- which it conveys. Here is an example: according to Codacons, Italian people spent about 255 millions euro this year to celebrate this holiday!
Now, I believe that we should know, accept and share the cultural traditions of the foreigners living in our country. But I can’t accept that a such meaningful holiday -like Halloween- is celebrated by people who don’t know anything about it. Many celebrate it just because someone said that it’s cool!
We have a brain…Let’s use it!
Martina
