Rustlings

Dark has fallen like a velvet cape, heavy and black. Already blood and gore walk the streets.  

Not the hospital stuff, nor the politicians, people of all ages in costumes. Maybe a third of people promenading on the pedestrian street, or pushing on the sidewalks to get home from work or the store, are costumed. But the spirit of Halloween is here. 

I was surprised while reading about Spanish celebrations to note that the Celtic north east celebrates Samhain, the Celtic Holiday that became Halloween in the US. They always have. Besides their own customs, they are borrowing now from the transnational Halloween phenomenon.

Tomorrow is Todos Santos, All Saints Day and a national holiday. When I asked, earlier this evening, a server and graduate student with abundant dark, curly hair if he planned to celebrate tomorrow with his family. 

“Of course. Todos Santos is very important in Spain.”

There you have it. The day Protestants lost due to the Reformation, while retaining Halloween—the night before,  was reinforced here and has not gone away. If anything, it is reported to be gaining strength even against the media power of Halloween.

From what I have read, since I am a foreign guest in the country and not yet part of such intimate networks as family to be part of that celebration, families will go to the cemetery, clean and decorate graves. They will share stories of their dead, and will take dishes of symbolically important food to share with the departed. 

I was told there are tours tourists can take to the main cemetery tomorrow to see people’s  ritual work on their graves and their gathering together. 

Following Spain’s Celtic customs in Samhain, people here in Alicante, they say, will roast and eat chestnuts as well as sweet potatoes called boniato. They will also share sweet wine, from what I have read.

Towards evening, as people dress to walk in the streets, see and be seen, food trucks will appear, If I remember right from last year. Chestnuts will scent the air with their roasting. People will also look for Saints’ Bones which are made from marzipan and sugar syrup.

Many if not most Alicantinos will attend mass, even if they are not religious per se. 

Almost everything will be closed tomorrow, as the country turns inward to its personal and family life. 

Still, given the importance of flowers and food to this feast, the flower markets and the food markets will be open tomorrow morning until about 2 pm, about lunch time when people should be home. Then in the evening the time for promenading, turning outward again, street vendors will work their trade. 

Tonight, halloween, there will be festivities, noise and fierce darkness that the city’s lights will attempt to pierce. 

Maybe, though I doubt it, I will hear a “trick or treat.” That custom seems not to have been transplanted outside of the American expat community,