Pitfall Halloween
Fright Night in Vilnius
How Lithuanians Came to Accept All Hallow’s Eve
Halloween is a big deal in Vilnius these days. The whole month of October is given over to events like haunted houses, rave parties, cursed circuses, zombie safaris and extreme survival trails. Here’s a list compiled in English for the daring tourist wanting to embark on one of these frightful quests. There’s even a Kanapių Labirintas, or Cannabis Labyrinth in Anykščiai, a short drive from Vilnius. Not that Lithuania has legalized marijuana. This is industrial hemp. Although I’m not sure what kind of condition it is in this time of year.
Pumpkins are everywhere. Persons who bought farmland at low prices need to maintain some kind of crop to retain low property taxes. Pumpkins and squash are easy to grow and pretty low maintenance. One of our clients, who is restoring a 17th century estate, gifts us a few pumpkins each year because his estate is designated as farmland. I usually make a pumpkin pie in return.
However, this was all new 30 years ago when I first came to Lithuania. Daina and I celebrated Halloween with our children but that was about it. Some pub had the audacity to have a Halloween night a couple years later and you should have read the reaction in the local newspapers. People were appalled someone could bring this American act of desecration to All Saints and All Souls Days. It really is quite spectacular to see the cemeteries lit up with votive candles on these hallowed evenings, especially Rasų Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in Vilnius.
But, what’s wrong with Halloween? It was actually part of the ancient Irish celebration that signaled the end of the harvest, with a wild night of reverie before paying tribute to the dead. Samhain, they called it, a two-day festival, which the Catholic Church appropriated, as they have so many pagan holidays. Apparently, the early missionaries found all those masks and animal skins too frightening and wanted the event to focus more solemnly on the departed.
Halloween pretty much became a thing of the past until the Americans resurrected it and turned it into a gala event that ranks second only to Christmas in the amount of money spent each year. Halloween generates a staggering 13.5 billion USD, according to the National Retail Federation, or about 115 USD per person. It’s split pretty evenly between costumes, decorations and candy.
As our kids grew older, they wanted to invite their school friends. Some would come. Others not, presumably because their parents forbade it. Our children are spread 6 years apart, so they divided the house and had what amounted to three separate parties under one roof. We made copious decorations based on The Nightmare Before Christmas, the kids’ favorite Halloween movie. Adakras staked out the basement. Goda would have her party in her bedroom. Akvilė had the living room, where we could keep a watchful eye as she and her classmates were the youngest. Eventually, the two sisters’ parties would kind of merge as Goda’s room really wasn’t big enough. Daina and I would retreat to our room to have a little peace and quiet before parents arrived to take their kids home.
It was fun. The kids loved it and would tell their other friends about it and soon the news spread of Halloween in Žverynas, the neighborhood where we live. The name itself implies a menagerie, which seemed fitting for the occasion. Fortunately, no one came to scold us that we were violating the sacred biduum. We got brave one year and decided to invite some of the parents, not sure how they would react. I was very careful to note this was an ancient Irish celebration, not American, and printed a short piece on the invitation card describing Samhain.
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Irish are good. Americans are bad. After all, Lithuanian and Irish Gaelic share the same Indo-European language branch. You’d be surprised how many cognates there are. The Irish ambassador pointed them out to me one year.
To our pleasant surprise everyone showed up. They even dressed for the ocassion. Adakras still insisted on having his Halloween Party in the basement, but otherwise it was a joint affair, parents and children of different ages. We got an even bigger surprise when Daina’s cousins, who have three children of their own, presented a song and dance in the spirit of Halloween. The parents weren’t quite sure what to make of the clip I showed from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You could have heard a pin drop as the cast belt out Let’s Do the Time Warp Again! Otherwise, everyone had a great time, gulping down Bloody Marys, Black Devils, and Poison Appletinis. I had pulled out Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide to help me create some delightful holiday concoctions.
Even the most devout Catholics among us could find nothing wrong with the evening. They compared it to Užgavėnės, the day before the Easter Lenten season where everyone similarly dresses up in costumes and goes door to door asking for blynai, or pancakes. It’s capped off with the burning of Morė, straw effigies, to signal the end of winter. It is also a combination of Catholic and pagan traditions.
The next day everyone went to their hometowns around the country to honor the departed souls of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Daina and her father went to Marijampolė and Kaunas to tend his parents’ graves. I stayed home with the kids, who had little interest in such affairs. Besides, Grandpa got up way too early. This is a tradition that now falls to her and her brother.
Nothing was infringed upon. The solemnity of this time-honored vigil remained intact. Why anyone bothered to be so worried Halloween would intrude upon this ritual was beyond me.
Daina explained to me that Lithuanians are very protective of their identity and initially saw Halloween as an infringement, especially coming from America. People were already complaining about the first McDonalds, the big Coca-Cola sign on top of one of the commercial buildings on the river, and Barbie dolls. It was bad enough keeping Russian influence at bay, now Old-Guard Lithuanians had to fend off the American commercial assault.
It was a losing battle as not only kids but most adults craved American consumer products and eventually the cultural defenses weakened. The Old Guard did take pride in finally getting the Coca-Cola sign removed as it violated nighttime lighting regulations. However, Halloween grew bigger and bigger each year.
I take perverse pride in having initiated it. I can’t claim full credit but I have to think those parties in the late 1990s and early 2000s served as an incubator. My pumpkin pie is still second to none, or so everyone tells me. I even added pumpkin bread for those who were lactose intolerant, using vegan butter and no milk. The last big party was a few years ago as the kids have grown up and moved away. I still make a pumpkin pie, as we invite Adakras and his girlfriend over for a weekend meal, whether it falls on Halloween or not, and then spend a quiet evening to ourselves. Daina doesn’t much like scary movies, so we revisit something less frightful like The Addams Family that is still in the same spirit.
We no longer bother with candy for trick-or-treaters as we don’t put out votive candles along the driveway with a big pumpkin at the end like we used to. We keep all the candy to ourselves.
