I wish I'd had my camera with me to take pix of the decorations we came across on Sunday, when we traveled to a "chestnut festival" in a town near us. Italians don't have the full Hallowe'en bandwagon, but Nov. 1 is the day of the dead, and many people travel around this time to visit the cemetaries of their loved ones, and at the same time there is a "harvest theme" in the fall with festivals for wine, olives, and particularly now, mushrooms and chestnuts.
In this town each neighborhood collectively decorated and there was a contest complete with ballots to judge the best effort. You were to take the ballot around to each area and get it stamped to "validate" your having visited them all before voting (to discourage ballot-stuffing!!). One had a western theme: "For a Fistful of Chestnuts" said the banner, and folks were running around in cowboy outfits and Ennio Morricone music was playing. Another had a fairy-tale theme (my favorite) with a real guy carving a 3-foot tall wooden Pinnocchio, an actor playing the traveling puppet master, the Fox and the Cat, etc. Other crazy folks were dressed as playing cards, a caterpillar (blue sleeping bag) sitting on a big papier mache toadstool, the three little pigs with their houses (three cute girls with pig noses, and a young lecherous wolf whose big feet made some little kids cry -- and hey what fun is Hallowe'en/dressing up if ya can't make kids cry - seriously!!). They had also constructed the prow of a pirate ship on an archway and had Peter Pan periodically staging swordfights with Captain Hook et al. in the streets, with a fireworks cannon going off every so often.. It was mayhem! And the kids all were having a great time running around the town in whatever their costumed roles were. We didn't check out the third one as the town was very steep and we didn't know where exactly the third zone was. We were already pooped and stuffed with yummy pasta (and tripe for DH) at the neighborhood communal 'supper' set-up.
Castiglione d'Orcia (not my image, a borrowed one)
Goonie's story about the van is just sad.
I think all the decorations bring a sense of wonderment and cutting loose from 'daily life' for kids, especially.. and when it gets turned into just a 'candy run' there's no fun in it anymore. I LOVED the scary feeling of running around loose on Hallowe'en when I was a kid. EVERY kid was out-of-doors; it's sad that it's perceived (mostly unjustifiably) as something impossible to contemplate today.
If people just stay home with the lights out, it's a downward spiral and soon there won't be any more trick-or-treating, period.
