Diwali

The end of the month of October contains festivals not very well known in our country. Both the Christians and the Hindus celebrate festivals that resemble each other but have different roots, and which in the end arrive at the same celebration: celebrating the change of season, celebrating the victory of the struggle of light against darkness, of wisdom against ignorance, of Good against Evil. Diwali is a Hindu festival that lasts almost a week and is believed to be the most important festival; it comes more or less in the same season, because the Hindus too use the lunar calendar, or rather the 'lunisolar' calendar, like us, and add a month every 32 or 33 months, approaching the solar calendar, and so synchronize the two calendars. Because the lunar year has 354 days and the solar year 365, the difference of 11 days is adjusted every 2 and a half years. In reality India, being almost a continent, has in different regions different customs of calendar, of celebration, of language, different usages and traditions. But the majority accept what has been said.

Diwali is at the same time a new year festival like our Rosh Hashanah and a festival of lights like our Hanukkah. What is interesting is that these festivals always come in the same season of the year. A similar festival is the feast of Saint Lucia, the victory of the struggle of light over darkness. This feast is celebrated mostly in Italy, in the Nordic countries such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, in Spain, and in certain countries of Latin America. The legend says that a girl named Lucy helped the secret Christians, bringing them food with her hands and holding the candle on her head. From there also came the name of the feast as the feast of lights. The feast has a relation both with the Christian martyrs and with the souls of those who died. And we too, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, go to visit the dear ones who passed to the other world, more or less at the same season. The same tradition exists among the Christians, who call it the Day of the Saints — in English All Saints, in French Toussaint — a day of commemoration of the beloved dead.

This day is celebrated on 31 October, and on the same day in America they celebrate what is called 'Halloween', or the feast of 'the Witches', which is also a day of commemoration of martyrs or the dead. The root is said to come from the Celts, or Galatians, who also gave their name to a quarter of Istanbul, the famous Galata — a root based on the harvest (hasat). Tradition has it that in America the children, lantern in hand, go from house to house asking for sweets or sometimes money. Years ago, in the quarter of Kuledibi, the Jewish children went about, lantern in hand, singing 'ashiya mi koles, syen paras de koles'. This tradition of carrying a lantern and going round the houses began in the 15th century, when children paraded from house to house to eat the sweets made for the souls of the dead and also to collect pennies to be paid for the prayers they said for them. In America this feast was influenced by novels such as 'Frankenstein', 'Dracula', 'the Mummy', with vampire costumes, cemetery articles, tombs, the dead and 'the best of us', or the demons.

Again in America, the custom at this feast is to eat apples dipped in honey, just as we do at Rosh Hashanah, and to eat toasted pumpkin seeds, something that never lacked in our homes, sitting near the stove to pass the time. Writing 'Feast of the Witches', one must add the folklore of the Slavs, which concerns 'Dziady', meaning the Fathers, the ancestors, the communion of the living with the dead. The word 'Dziady' comes from 'dede', which also in the proto-Slavic language means 'father of the mother or of the father', an old man with an honourable position in the family. As we see, words we believe original to one nation are already found in the languages of other nations that have no dealings at all with each other. Like words, feasts too greatly resemble each other among countries that have no geographical relation between them. We wish that Friendship and Brotherhood in all the world be for ever. Source: Wikipedia