Every fall, the front steps along my street in Sarasota fill up with pots of chrysanthemums — gold, rust, burgundy — lined up beside the pumpkins. I love them. I also know that if I carried one of those pots into an Italian friend's home as a hostess gift this weekend, the room would go very quiet.
It has nothing to do with taste. It has to do with which holiday Italy is really keeping this weekend, and it is not the one with the pumpkins.
Italy does Halloween, sort of
Halloween came to Italy late. For decades most Italians knew it only from Peanuts, where Linus waits all year for the Great Pumpkin — in Italian, il Grande Cocomero, the Great Watermelon, which made even less sense. According to Gambero Rosso, it only began to catch on as a real party in the mid-1990s, helped along by Hollywood.
Today children in costume do go door to door calling dolcetto o scherzetto, trick or treat, and plenty of neighborhood shops keep candy by the register for them. There are parties, carved pumpkins, restaurant menus built around the theme.
But ask an Italian what this weekend is about and you will hear a different answer. Halloween is the night before. The holiday is the day after.
The two days that matter
November 1st is Ognissanti, All Saints' Day, a national holiday: schools and offices close, like on the fifteenth of August. This year it falls on a Sunday, so no one gains a day off. November 2nd, the Commemorazione dei defunti, is not a public holiday at all, and yet it is one of the most deeply felt days of the Italian year. Families go to the cemetery, tidy the family graves, light candles and bring flowers.
The flower is the chrysanthemum. It blooms in October and November, stands up to the cold and lasts for weeks, which is how it became the flower of the graves. In much of the world it means joy, long life, good wishes. In Italy it means one thing, and so it is almost never given as a gift.
In Sicily, the day has a sweeter side. On the morning of November 2nd, children traditionally find presents said to have been left overnight by relatives who have died: toys, marzipan fruit called frutta martorana, painted sugar figures, and biscuits called ossa dei morti, bones of the dead. It sounds macabre. To the children it is closer to Christmas morning.
What to wear, and what to bring
So if you are with Italians this weekend, in Italy or at an Italian friend's table here, two things are worth knowing.
First, bring anything but mums. Roses, a potted herb, a box of good pastries, a bottle of wine. Anything but the flower from the cemetery.
Second, you do not need a costume. The most Italian way to meet Halloween is a very good black dress: it works at a party on Saturday night and never looks like a joke, which is bella figura at its simplest. The black midi dress I would choose is semi-sheer viscose chiffon, double-layered through the body, with soft cap sleeves and a slim beige split-leather belt. Dark enough for the night, soft enough to still look like you.
For the holiday itself on Sunday, when the mood lifts, the cream maxi skirt by Joleen, printed with small red rosebuds and finished with a lace hem, is my answer. Worn with a red knit, it carries the right flower for once.
Halloween, in the end, is the part Italy borrowed. The part it kept is quieter: flowers on a grave, a candle, a sugar doll for a child, a good dress for a serious day. Both fit into one weekend. More dresses for either night are in the dresses.
She travels to Italy each season to hand-select the boutique's collection.
Keep reading
The Best-Dressed Woman in Any Italian Town Is 78
How to Accessorize a Little Black Dress
