by Lily C. Fen
With Halloween slowly taking over Zurich, in ways that hadn’t yet existed ten years ago when I first arrived here, I found myself admiring the holiday once again: plastic pumpkins and monster costumes were being sold at the supermarket, and the Quartiertreff Enge brought us a Halloween party with witches and pumpkin-cutting to create our own Jack-O-Lanterns.
What was it about Halloween that hearkens back to the Celts and their belief in the thinning veil that separated the underworld and our domain? I was so in love with this tradition as a pre-teen that I decided to write about it, and one of my favorite non-fiction books as a young reader, entitled Ever Wonder Why?. You can read about it here.
Further reading revealed that Irish settlers brought the holiday with them to the USA, eventually becoming the commercialized Halloween known today. Meanwhile, sources such as the newspaper The Philippine Star allow us to delve into the tradition of pangangaluluwa in Philippine history: the piece by Alejandro R. Rojes explains how Halloween and the Philippine traditions I knew back home are connected.
Halo-Halo, the group that brings together 2nd Generation Filipinos and Filipinas in the German-speaking region, recently devoted their November session to “Araw ng mga Patay”. Their act of remembering the dead is something I talk about in my story about November 1. It is a loving, celebratory act of coming to the cemetery in droves, with guitar and a feast in tow. The Halo-Halo members marked this day as a significant part of their Filipino heritage.
For them as for me, there’s something valuable in taking a moment to stop and recall our loved ones who have gone before us, to hold them in our memories, the way elephants hold the skulls of their departed, as a way of grieving and remembering. Along with the traditions they have passed on, we carry them with us, and we are the richer for it. ♦
Photos by Lily C. Fen: candle and carved turnips for Räbeliechtli, another November tradition celebrated in Zürich.
