Lots of Halloween treats in the windows of bakeries here in Chiavari
this week. There were pumpkin shaped candies and cookies and my
favorites, pan dei morti, the bread of the dead. Halloween is becoming more popular here, not
the trick or treating part, the Italians haven’t quite grasped that concept yet,
but the 20 somethings do like dressing up and looking weird and doing the
Zombie Walks. But for those closer to and beyond 40, this weekend is a serious
holiday. November 1st was Ognisanti, All Saints Day and November
2nd is La Commemorazione dei Defunti, All Souls Day.
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| An Italian Cemetary |
This is the weekend families travel
kilometers and kilometers to lay flowers and votive candles on the graves of
their parents and grandparents and other dead relatives. I doubt people still
believe that the souls of their relatives return to Earth every year, but just
in case it’s true, and because this is Italy and anything can be true, special
masses are said for the dead. It is also a time for families to be together and
pay tribute to those who have passed.
Celebrating the dead is a very old tradition that dates back to
the time of the Roman pagans. The Roman holiday was called the Parentalia,
and while it may sound a bit excessive now, the Parentalia was
a serious nine day celebration during which neither marriages or any type of
legal business was allowed. The Romans would leave garlands of flowers and
wine-soaked bread on the tombs of their dead relatives. By offering the evil
spirits gifts of food and flowers, they hoped the evil spirits would be
appeased and not dance around in the cemeteries raising havoc and disturbing
the dead who were trying to rest in peace.
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| Roman Cemetary, Pompeii |
After Christianity took hold the Parentalia morphed
into All Saints Day. What happened is the Catholic
Church found that there weren’t enough days in the year to celebrate all of the
martyred saints so in the early part of the 9th century Pope
Boniface IV created a collective holiday to celebrate all of them with one
holiday.
The date of All Saints Day was
later changed to the first day of winter, as it was believed that was the time
the division between earthly life and afterlife was razor thin making it easy
for the dead to reenter their bodies and return to the earth for a visit. Maybe the Zombie walks represent that part of
the celebration, it’s possible.
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| Reconnecting with the Living and the Dead |
Like the Roman Parentalia, All Souls Day celebrations also
revolved around food but in a different way. Instead of leaving food on their
relatives graves, people in the province of Massa Carrara (Tuscany) distributed
it to the needy. In Monte Argenario, also in Tuscany, there was a
tradition of sewing large pockets on the front of the clothes of orphaned
children so everyone could give them a little something, food or money, and in
Abruzzo they would carve out pumpkins, put a candle inside of them and use them
as lanterns. Any of this sound familiar?
Like every important holiday, Ognisanto has its
special treats – the most important being the oddly shaped pan dei morti. And
even though pan dei morti translates to bread of the dead, it’s really a cookie
made with figs and nuts and other good things.
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| Pan dei Morti |
The cookies sort of look like hands in prayer, but originally they
were supposed to resemble a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Plates of cookie
babies were left on graves as a
sacrifice to the evil spirits who lived in the cemeteries, as everyone knew
those evil spirits were beastly ghouls who liked nothing better than feasting
on tender, chewy little babies.
The cookies are symbolic in other ways as well. To begin with they
are made from other cookies, amaretti or savoiardi,
the savoiardi being the cookies used
for tiramisu, which symbolize the transformation of old into new,
as one person dies another is born and life continues.
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| Catacombs of the Cappuccini, Palermo, Sicily |
The recipe also calls for dried fruit and figs, the same
ingredients used in pre-Christian offerings to the dead. In the past they would
darken honey by heating it on a stove to make the cookies as dark as the earth
in a burial ground, but today a little ground cocoa is used instead. The
cookies are dense and chewy with a bit of crunch from the ground amaretti and
pine nuts, which give the idea of crunching dead people’s bones. Yum, yum,
crunchy bones. So how does that song go – everything old is new again? It would
seem that is true, at least here, right down to the bone crunching end.
ON ANOTHER NOTE
This Italian Life now has a Facebook Page. You can get there
by clicking the Facebook badge on the right hand side of the page or going to
https://www.facebook.com/thisitalianlife. I’m still working out the
kinks, and the badge is kind of crummy, but it will take you to daily updates
of life in Italy. Today you'll find more info on the origins or Halloween. I hope you’ll check it out, leave a comment or
two, and while you are there it would be nice if you gave the page a Like.
Right now there are 20 likes and one of them is mine. Thanks.
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