All Hallow’s Eve has come and gone, and All Hallow’s, too, as has Samhain, the Celtic new year marking the shift from autumn to winter. Today, this Second of November, brings All Souls Day: Day of the Dead, Día de Muertos, the Festa dei Morti. We are now well into Hallowtide, the days each year when we remember our beloved dead.
I have always loved Hallowe’en, since my earliest recollections of it, but I have also always loved visiting cemeteries, which is something we did a lot of when I was a boy. One gift I received from my family is the understanding that this is what we do: we do not forget the ones who have come and gone, and we look after each other and care for each other both in this life and what follows. My love of Hallowe’en and the sort of Hallowe’en I celebrate comes out of this understanding. Always on the table at Hallowe’en and Ognissanti (All Saints Day) and today’s Festa dei Morti is a penitential dessert from Puglia, the region in Italy from which my grandparents hailed. The dish, called ciccecútte, is something we eat just at this time of year, which is probably why we understand, from early on, that it is special, as are these days of Hallowtide. The dessert is made from cooked wheat berries, pomegranate, roasted almonds, and chocolate, covered in vincotto (or mosto cotto, or u cutto in my grandparents’ Lucerine dialect… or saba), spiced with cinnamon and cloves. It is a most earthy taste, reminding us of things below, rather than above. It is a dessert that handily calls to mind Persephone’s journey below the earth each autumn and winter, a ritual dish one eats to be in communion with all that rests below the earth.
This season of remembrance carries on through Martinmas, on the 11th of November. Here, meanwhile, is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for November. It is a PDF that you may print and put up on your refrigerator or bulletin board or staircase door.
COME SEE US!
Our next pop-up market is this Saturday, November 7, from 3 to 8 PM: It’s the Downtown Day of the Dead celebration at Esplanade Park in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. Unless it’s terribly rainy, you’ll find our double tent there, filled with traditional artesanías mexicanas for Dia de Muertos, just across the street from the Children’s Museum and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. We are always there for the first part of the festival, before the procession begins that moves it to Revolution Live until late in the night. We generally start packing up our tent soon after 8:00.
ADVENT CALENDARS
Now’s the time to order Advent calendars and candles! Our calendars are all from Germany (with a few from England); our candles are from Sweden and the UK. Click here to get to our online catalog!
The CONVIVIO DISPATCH for HALLOWE’EN
Folks subscribed to our sister publication, The Convivio Dispatch, which is a more story-focused publication delivered as an email in your inbox, received last Friday our annual Convivio Dispatch for Hallowe’en, which this year was an autumnal ramble called “Chitarra Romana.” Much like the image on this month’s calendar, the Dispatch involves a bit of raking, plus quite a bit about the Sabbathday Lake Shakers and my Italian grandparents. As my gift to you, click here to read the tale. It may, the more I think about it, be better suited to All Souls Day, anyway, than it was to Hallowe’en. If you like it, please consider subscribing. It’s free and my dispatches are few and far between, trust me… so there won’t be a lot of clutter in your inbox; just an occasional good story (perhaps two or three a year).
Image: “November” by L. Birge Harrison. Oil on canvas, 1881 [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons].