With the festival seemingly ever more popular in the UK, the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween have been prowling our streets and doorsteps in towns and cities the lengths and breadth of the country over recent nights.
ong a mainstay of the US festival calendar, it is perhaps the celebration’s secular nation, along with its obvious commercial exploitability, which has allowed Halloween to enjoy such enormous popularity across the world. Associated more with dressing up and the (over)consumption of sweets than with any particular spiritual meaning, people of all faiths, as well as those who prefer to keep a distance from religion altogether, can join in with the fun.
Of course, things haven’t always been so. The celebration has its roots in the Celtic pagan festival of Samhain, a time during which the spirits of the dead were thought to return to earth and join their descendants in revelry. In later centuries, this celebration morphed into the Christian festival of All Hallows then, later still, into the Halloween we know today.
In many Asian countries these traditional celebrations still take place, even as Western influenced Halloween celebrations gain in popularity
Festivals of the dead are common practice across many cultures throughout the world. In many Asian countries these traditional celebrations still take place, even as Western influenced Halloween celebrations gain in popularity. In Japan for instance, Obon, often referred to as the Festival of Lanterns, is celebrated annually in August. As with earlier Celtic celebrations, Obon is considered a time when benevolent spirits of the deceased return to the realm of the living in order that they might spend time with relatives and descendants. Celebrants hang colourful paper lanterns outside of their homes in order to guide the spirits in the correct direction and prepare special offerings of food, a practice common to many festivals of the dead.
Even as Obon continues to be an important occasion marked annually by millions of Japanese, Halloween has been embraced to a greater extent than in perhaps any other Asian nation with costume parties and parades common, particularly amongst the young. In other Asian countries the Western festival has yet to gain such large scale popularity but indigenous celebrations are present nonetheless.
Festivals of the dead are common practice across many cultures throughout the world
In Cambodia the festival of Pak Ben, usually falling in September, lasts a full fourteen days during which huge batches of rice mixed with sesame seed are prepared for hungry spirits while their living counterparts enjoy the culmination of the festival – a day spent in the company of family and friends at their local pagoda listening to music and speeches and enjoying the culinary delicacies whipped up for the occasion. In China, meanwhile The Festival of Hungry Ghosts is dedicated to the spirits of those who died unnatural deaths or who may not have received proper burial. Hungry for recognition and affection, incense is burned and offerings of food made that these poor souls might pass to the other side.
The universality of these festivals speaks of a fundamental desire in human beings to devise explanations for what happens to us after death. Even as the relentless march of globalisation sees Western Halloween customs spread across Asia, these traditional celebrations are certain to continue.
by Sam Jones
