To Antoxx:
I also like spend time in parties with persons I love, and I relize that every celebration is a commercial event: how much money is spent every year for Christmas? I don't like this and I try to reduce useless purchase.
But while Christmas (Easter and so on), belongs to our tradition, Halloween (and Valentine's day too) was "imported" from Ireland, Great Britain, America (and so on) only for trade reasons: November is a month far from the school beginning and Christmas (at the same way February is far from Christmas and Easter), and conumers are very very low; celebration of a recurrence is only a way to increase them.
In past time there were something similar to Halloween recurrence in many countries: in some Romagna rural areas (where I live), were made Halloween's pumpinks too (they were named "piligrine"). It was probably a Celtic heritage, like the tipical way to pronunciate the letter "s". Celts, in fact, lived in Northern Italy too, then Romans conquered this regions, but something of this ancient culture still remains.
Anyway this tradition is lost, at present day, and "Witches' Night" is only on June 23, the night before St. John the Baptist's day, wich is very closed with summer solstice (of course another Celtic celebration!): legends and superstition tell that whitches meet one each other at crossroads at midnight or that is possible to know the future with some particular magic ritual (using egg whites).
Well, in summary and in my opinion every party is a good thing, in every day it occour, even in Halloween too, but it's not necessary celebrating Halloween come hell or high water. I can meet persons I love on other festive occasions, for a dinner or a pizza all toghether, or when some friend of mine take his guitar and we all sing in the bar we usually attend.
Golden Reviewer (122 )