As November premiered, a debate toured some social media sites and involved various criteria. Just the last day of October there were Cubans (there, but especially here) who dressed up, or at least put on makeup, to celebrate the Halloween party with their families, children and friends. Immediately, angry voices emerged that rose up against such a celebration and there were equally, less angry and more rational in general, a few reflections. The plot from which criticism begins is that Halloween is a party that has nothing to do with our traditions. Therefore, such celebrations, fruits of globalization, are nothing more than an imperialist and consumerist cultural penetration.
Let’s get to the first thing first. The useful Wikipedia reveals that Halloween has existed long before U.S. imperialism threw its first stone. We save you the search, to keep reading, and tell you that the record of the original word, Allhallow-even, is originally used as such in the 16th century. The word Hallow-e’en has been used since 1745. It also slogans the virtual encyclopedia that the “Halloween (contraction of All Hallows’ Eve, ‘Eve of All Saints’), also known as Halloween or Halloween, is a modern festival resulting from the syncretism caused by the Christianization of the summer eve festivities of Celtic origin”.
This mixture between Celtic jolgorios (the Samhain, feast of spirits for the transition to the new year at the end of the harvests) and the Christian celebration of the Day of All Saints (celebrated by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches), also received other ingredients along the way. To the United States the tradition came through Irish immigrants, more or less in the first half of the nineteenth century. More widespread, it began to be celebrated in the northern nation around the first decades of the twentieth century. In some places in Latin America, especially in Mexico, there are similar festivals, many of them with pre-Columbian origins, that merged or transformed over time.
In Cuba, it is true, such a celebration never took root or any equivalent of its own resemblance. In fact, as we have consulted, no older person remembers to celebrate Halloween before 1959. So far, it is fully noteworthy that the northern celebration never ignited on the island. We also agree that the media, in serials, films and novels, has had a significant influence on expanding the date and fostering more or less happy global imitations. Now, before criticism, there is an important question we need to ask. Why do a few families, friends, ordinary people, decide to throw a party like this, alien, imported? Are they all enemy vehicles and culturally penetrated by the empire?
To answer the question, we would have to resort to our national traditions, to the reasons for celebration. Any enumeration, except the parrandas of Remedios or Bejucal and any other provincial or municipal festival, will not give excessive results. The Innocent Day jokes are gone. Ancient collective celebrations such as the choice of beauty queens, television, carnival or whatever, have been suppressed in majority, being rightly criticized by Cuban feminist organizations, given the sexist character focused only on highlighting female physical beauty. But no other one was generated, with new and attractive values, more inclusive, to replace them. Carnivals, provincial or capital, no longer bring with them, as before, the traditional walks or parades with antifaces and masks. On the other hand, costume parties are in private hands or those that can afford to afford to pay for them, as the state institutions that rented these clothes vanished.
Our homeland dates, becoming more than celebrated, are commemorated. Neither the holidays of July 26, National Rebellion Day, nor October 10, The Beginning of the Wars of Independence, bring reasons for the celebration and less for makeup or masks. The first of May, International Workers’ Day, is not an indigenous holiday date and in our years of life we have never seen anyone celebrate 20 May, ephemeris of the establishment of the Republic in 1902. The first of January, the anniversary of the revolutionary triumph and Liberation Day, is perhaps the only calendar that brings to the celebration since it also coincides with the New Year, but very rare would be to associate the date with costumes and masks of ultra-tomb. The Days of Women, Lovers, Mothers and Fathers, have a more familiar character and conducive to intimate gathering. Easter or Christmas, these are entirely debunked and commercial in much of the planet today, with their snowy pines, reindeer and noeles dads, oblivious to their original religious and even geographical connotation, for years they were silenced, camouflaged or uninvested, although, for a while now, they live a kind of reliver on the island.
Seen like this, there aren’t many opportunities for a family to exercise their right to come together, dress up and play a little further in a shared celebration that recreates fantasies. Besides, what harm do they do with this? Yes, some little ones should be avoided (and parents should intervene and handle this) when their trick-or-treat ask for candy in front of a neighbor’s door doesn’t get any candy. The situation in our country, unsustainable, makes it unlikely that many families will spend their income on treats to give away when they must first ensure livelihood.
Now, are our creeds and roots so weak that they will come down, penetrated by imperialism, because a few families and friends dress up and celebrate an imported party? If there has been one thing this island has shown, from its culture and its historical becoming, it is the capacity for absorption and transformation of foreign influences. That process of constant transculturation, in fact, is just what resulted in our national identity, that famous ajiaco we are, as Don Fernando Ortiz said. What humanistic, ideological, political connotation discredits the children and adults dressed as zombies? Is our social project so rigid that it no longer admits even innocent fun? What society for human beings do we want to build if joy, even on imported dates, is seen with ojeriza and fear of enemy assault?
There are more arguments. Cuba, outside Of Halloween, does have a long mythological and fantastic tradition, as writer Maikel Rodríguez Calviño recalled in a Facebook post. Perhaps today’s modern urban life, and the losses of so many things we suffer, have erased these beautiful myths a little. But the screamer, the headless rider, the guijes, the babujales, the cagueeiros, the haunted houses, the water mothers, the appeared and so many other characters of ours (historyd by Samuel Feijóo, Gerardo Chávez, Manuel Rivero and other researchers), can well sustain a Jala the natural and Cuban government.
Gather a few oral narrators, actors and writers. Swap industrial candies for Cuban sweets, which are quite a few in our grandmothers’ recipes today. Above all, authorize a few Creole investments and accountpropists to use their tax money directly in their communities and blocks, under government or popular or public supervision, if desired. Use the start and end of summer, school year, or any other date. Then let there be costumes of our own, stories and horror legends of our own, sweets of ours and own reasons for celebration. This way you can found a tradition.
Because the first reason for Halloween costumes is that we haven’t been able to offer our own alternatives so you don’t need to import other people’s parties. What’s more, rescue the sandpit, if you want to be a decay of self-title, and spread our legends, music and stories further. But may they be offered alive and at stake, without exemplary didactisms, inhuman heroes, unattainable of such perfect, nor disciplinary morals to follow. This lack of alternatives (often not because there are not, but because they are ignored, dusted or even flaky under the “cannot” or “no money”) we see it today with music, adventures, serials, sport and even history. Having a lot and good to offer or produce, it spreads (even matters, here it is) and takes root the worst.
Through our sunny streets there are Russian Orthodox, Jewish practitioners and even people in the clothes of Islam, burkas included. If we can, without feeling penetrated, respect such creeds of faith, many of them do imported and oblivious to our own, why not do so with an innocent feast? Too many limits we have experienced, from the inevitable geographical to the many absurdity that have been imposed on our society over the years. A celebration, foreign or not, should not awaken the ghosts of rigidity and the subsequent and never eliminated temptation from prohibitions.
A society, by boil and stone, does not turn out to be better, nor higher, nor freer. On the contrary, joy, family communion, the right to celebrate whatever comes to us whenever it does not harm and respect one’s neighbour, are values that a truly humanist project should promote and applaud. Playing the dead for a while is not at all a cause for alarm or weakness. More, if in the end, when the visiting spirits are gone, the festive energy helps us to face the problems, those of our own and very alive, which will undoubtedly arrive at dawn the next day and without offering us tricks or deals. Ω
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