Like Valentine’s Day and the special days for mothers and fathers, the celebration of Halloween has taken off in our country, to the delight of commercial establishments. We might as well go several steps further and turn our observance of the Day of the Dead into a tourist-worthy celebration, like they have done in Mexico.
All Hallows Eve is tomorrow, but the event has become movable in our country, with trick-or-treating held days in advance in offices, shopping malls, hotels and private subdivisions.
Halloween has become a children’s moment, with parents even paying to have their kids join trick-or-treat events. Often the fees are more expensive than the treats the children collect, but no matter; the kids just want to wear costumes and have fun.
Last Saturday was popular for the advance celebration of Halloween – no classes and, for many parents, no office work. Today’s there’s work and tomorrow, many will visit cemeteries ahead of All Souls and All Saints’ Days.
In my youth we didn’t celebrate Halloween, but visiting crowded cemeteries on Nov. 1 was always fun and an opportunity for family gatherings. The adults played cards around or even on top of tombs while we ran around the cemetery, gathering melted wax from burning candles and forming them into balls and other shapes. We liked passing our fingers across candle flames to see how long we could endure the heat without suffering burns. Why? Who knows? It was a kid thing.
Besides the gambling, gossiping, eating and playing, there were always ghost stories exchanged around the tombs. Some were embellished to scare the kids; others were true – that is if you’re a believer in the supernatural, in ghosts and animist spirits. A lot of Filipinos are, including President Duterte, who said he didn’t relish the company of the ghosts at Malacañang.
He must have been half-serious. Many of us who worked as reporters at Malacañang have heard loud footsteps, the sound of typewriters, and windows and doors banging at the Palace in empty rooms with no wind. We weren’t drunk or on Fentanyl or ecstasy. The eerie sounds could be heard at all hours of the day and night. We just laughed them off but avoided walking around alone when darkness fell.
For us such stories are fun. For many other Filipinos, even in this age of space travel and the Internet, the supernatural is part of their everyday reality.
* * *
Old trees, like the balete or ficus across the main entrance of Malacañang Palace, are particularly dreaded by the superstitious. When such trees are pruned or cut down, a by-your-leave is needed to avoid the wrath of the resident spirit.
It would be laughable, except I know people even in Metro Manila who fell ill after cutting down or drastically pruning trees, and attributed their affliction to offended spirits. The afflicted persons looked for folk doctors who read tealeaves in a cup to find out which person or spirit was responsible, and then suggested what could be done to appease the one who put the hex. The folk doctor also applied or prescribed herbal remedies.
People swear that the treatment works. If the mind plays a big part in healing, they could be telling the truth.
We still have exorcists especially in rural areas who beat up “possessed” patients to drive away evil spirits. Among those who have suffered beatings are epileptics. And I know people who seriously believe their enemies can have them hexed by a mangkukulam – a witch or warlock – with the cure possible only through a counter-spell or tawas from another mangkukulam, this time a white witch. Such rituals are still done today, no kidding.
The inadequacy of public health services is one of the reasons for the persistence of such beliefs. But I know long-time residents of Metro Manila who live near health centers but still prefer folk medicine. They prefer to have a cat gently run its claws across the throat of someone who gets a fishbone stuck in his or her throat.
* * *
We’re not the only ones who believe in this mumbo-jumbo. While Halloween has become a children’s party, we know it’s an ancient pagan feast. Most chroniclers believe its origin is Celtic. But ancient societies in other parts of the world have similar beliefs about the wall separating the worlds of the living and the dead becoming porous, allowing spirits to visit the living, when autumn turned to winter. When the nights became longer, I guess it became easier to imagine ghouls and animist spirits playing around the house.
Our observance of All Saints and All Souls is strikingly similar to the Mexican Day of the Dead, except the Mexicans have turned the event into a carnival as grand as the ones in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro that draw hordes of tourists.
Perhaps we don’t like capitalizing on the dead and people’s grief, and we fear ridicule if we exploit the commercial prospects of animism and superstition. But our special days for the dearly departed are unique and we can turn them into tourist draws together with our local version of voodoo.
New Orleans has elaborate tourist packages for visiting haunted houses and the centuries-old tombs supposedly of vampires, evil warlocks and witches. The city has numerous voodoo shops and seers who peer into crystal balls, read Tarot cards and tealeaves, and explain astrological charts.
Romania has five-star-rated “Dracula tours” to the 14th century castle in Transylvania of the real blood-loving Count Dracul, Vlad the Impaler. The package includes a candlelit “vampire dinner” and a campfire “with all the right stories.”
Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace, Sighisoara Medieval Citadel, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Of course it’s tourist kitsch, but visiting Transylvania is on my bucket list.
Turning beliefs in the supernatural into sources of livelihood could be good news for local communities in our country.
Tourism can uplift the poor so they can afford, among other things, better resting places for their dearly departed instead of mass graves.
Who knows, tourism earnings might even allow more communities to have modern hospitals, so people need not turn to folk medicine to get rid of kulam.