Halloween and All Saints' Day

We celebrated both Halloween and All Saints' Day a few weeks ago. Traditionally, we haven't celebrated Halloween in Finland; it has landed into our country only recently, and I think mainly children and young people are interested in it. We normally celebrate All Saints' Day by bringing candles to the graves of our departed loved ones, and that's the way we Finns see the meaning of that day; as a special day to reminisce our family members, friends and relatives that have passed away.

This year the 1st of November in our house included elements of both of these two very different celebrations. In the afternoon we had a Halloween -party at home. Our five-year-old daughter had requested a Halloween party for her and her cousins, and so I decided to throw a small-scale party for them. We had some Halloween -decorations inside the house, served some snacks and cake and candy and most importantly: we all had Halloween costumes on. I myself have been to a masquerade -party only a few times, and getting dressed up like that is quite strange to me, but this time it was actually great fun! My daughter wanted to dress up as a fairy (we slipped from the original theme a bit), and I dressed up as a witch! We both chose our clothes and jewellery carefully, did our hair (I wore a wig, so doing my hair was easy), and even put some nailpolish on which suited the roles of a fairy (nice red nailpolish) and a witch (black nailpolish, of course). The guests were just as enthusiastic about the party as we were, and as a result, we ended up having a small fairy, a little beautiful princess and an Indian princess (Pocahontas, maybe..?) in the party. The witch served as a waitress and a general hostess, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Later in the evening when it was already dark outside, we went to a cemetary to take some candles to the graves of our deceased family members. You can't believe how beautiful the cemetary looked with hundreds of candles twinkling in the dark! When we were walking back to the car from the cemetary, I couldn't help but thinking how the same day entailed two opposite things; a children's party full of life, and an evening reminding us of death and dead people. It seemed amazing but in a way very comforting to see how these two things could actually intertwine together quite easily. I guess that's what they do anyhow; life and death are never that far apart.

Picture: christmasstockimages.com