by Answers to today’s questions at https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/131751.html
1. Do you celebrate or observe Halloween? How?
I don’t… but increasingly, a lot of families with kids have started to do Halloween in the last decade or so. And there’s a tons of Halloween candy in stores nowadays as well. But it’s totally commercial in nature, the point of all activities seems to be to get free candy (at least that’s how appears to an outsider). I don’t know if it’s like that in the US.
2. What is your favorite Halloween candy?
Don’t have one. I’ve tried a few chocolates and candies because I love chocolate and candy, but the Halloween stuff taste worse than our normal stuff, cheap and industrial. I think that may be because, I think maybe it’s imported from abroad? I don’t think it’s lucrative for our domestic companies to develop local Halloween candy themselves. At least all the ones I’ve checked have been imported from abroad.
3. Do you get trick-or-treaters on Halloween?
We get them starting with the last weekend of October and through the first weekend of November, and all through that week. There’s recently been some noise about this because there’s no tradition here of Halloween (is as in which actual days) so it’s spread out randomly over a week and the bookending weekends, and the continual randomness annoys a portion of people even though they like Halloween, not to mention those who don’t like Halloween at all!
There’s also the fact the at the same exact time (the end of October and start of November), there is the “pyhämiestenpäivä” aka “vainajien päivä”, which has been observed in Finland for centuries. Typically by lighting candles on graves and remembering dead loved ones and general quietness and thoughtfullness. So the opposite of Halloween. I think fewer people observe pyhämiestenpäivä now than a few decades ago but still, a lot of people feel like an imported, commercial Halloween insults and takes away from the Finnish tradition because both are at the same time.
I don’t open my door to trick-or-treaters, and if they ring my bell a lot during an evening, I use a towel to muffle the bell because it’s annoying and frustrating.
4. Do you enjoy dressing up in costumes?
I do, but not Halloween costumes.
5. What is your favorite Halloween memory?
I don’t have Halloween related memories or happenings. Halloween didn’t exist in Finland when I was a kid or a young person. I’ve never observed/celebrated it when it started to come along here because by then I was like 30 by then and I’ve never been into witches etc. and I don’t like it being so commercial.
It seems not so different than in my country. We also celebrate pyhäinpäivä (we call it Wszystkich Świętych – All Saints’) and we also visit cemeteries where we light candles on graves of deceased family members. In Poland it’s always celebrated on 1st November and it’s a holiday. Usually there are huge crowds in cemeteries on that day! I also used to visit my grandparents’ graves when I lived in Poland.
Halloween appeared in Poland first in the late 90s, I think. Then I started to be more and more popular, however, I think it’s mostly popular among children. Many people oppose it as it doesn’t really belong to our culture. I agree that it’s mostly commercial. Actually, in the past (before Christianity) there were some traditions among Slavs and also Lithuanians that were related to connecting to the dead ones, like Dziady:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziady
It actually has some similarities to Halloween but unlike that it belongs to our culture. It’s largely forgotten though, however, it is still celebrated in some parts of Poland, Ukraine or Belarus. I wonder, did similar rituals exist at some point in Finland? I wouldn’t be surprised if they existed, Finns and Slavs have many things in common, we both tend to be quite melancholic 🙂