In the frame of our visit program which consisted of establishing the cultural relations between families and local communities in the USA and Azerbaijan, also creating public diplomacy through the exchange of cultural values we got acquainted with the Asian Art Museum and the Art Gallery in Fort Worth and also could take part at the Halloween, one of the beloved holidays in the USA, especially in Dallas. This is the biggest holiday in the USA after Christmas. It is estimated that Americans spend $2.5 billion annually.
Halloween is similar to Novruz for some reasons. People look forward to it all year round. A month before it the celebration atmosphere covers everywhere. Houses are dressed in holiday style. Halloween feels in the air – outside of the buildings, in offices and at churches. We come across pumpkins, orange colour and a lot of other Halloween attributes everywhere: at Unitarian Church Dallas, at Presbyterian Church, in different offices.
Today Halloween is a fun holiday. The spooky part of it brings excitement. This holiday has become more popular in recent years. More and more Americans fix their wedding date on that day. Apart from this, pumpkin throwing races are held in Baltimore every year. Physics students show off their different inventions: how to throw the pumpkin form the tenth floor so that it does not smash. Halloween is a good opportunity for charity as well. People give out candy boxes for those who cannot afford to buy sweets. They also hand out special costumes for handicapped children and donate the poor.
Worship of Fire
There are a number of points related to fire which attract the attention. The reserarchers of the Celtic history say that the Celtic people would extinguish their fires in their houses on the Samhain day and then light them again with the fire brought from druids fires. Druids were priests as well as poets, scientists and religious leaders. According to some other sources druids their own a mystical orden and they control all the aspects of the life of Celtic people.
In general, there are a number of similar points of the New Year among the world peoples. Once we came across some facts about the celebration of the New Year similar to our Novruz in ancient Greece. So at the beginning of the new astronomic year the ancient Greeks either burned or submerged the scarecrows in water as the symbol of the old year (unlike our “kosa” – the Novruz Holiday character – it doesn’t die, it is “killed”).
Halloween reminds Novruz Holiday in some aspects. Like us, on Halloween girls do fortune-telling activities. Bonfires are important here, too. In Azerbaujan, during Novruz Holiday people organize a ceremony called “needling” where they put a piece of cotton between the two needles thinking of some certain single young man and woman, throw it into the water and then stir it. If the needles “meet”, the young people are thought to be together. The only difference is that on Halloween the decision is “made” by the fire, not water. So here the young girls throw the chestnuts to the fire. If they both fall together and burn, this means that they will marry. But if they fall apart it is interpreted as parting.
Nowadays Halloween is is a fire festival, too. People light candles and there are fireworks on this holiday. Apart form this, people remove the inner flesh of pumpkins, make eyes, noses and mouths on them to resemble a human face and then light a candle there. Pumpkins symbolize abundance. We would like to interpret the lit candle as a way to scare away the evil spirits on our mind and the perfect addition to light and thinking.
Either expel or accept
Later this holiday lost its mystical meaing and became the day of the poor. Masks started to be used not to ward away the evil spirits, but to avoid being recognised because on the Halloween evening the poorwear their masks and go to rich people, knock on their doors and ask for food and help. At that time they said “either expel or accept”. But nowadays Halloween is not for the poor. It is for everyone. We celebrated this holiday on the Swiss Avenue near the centre of Dallas. This street is named so as the immigrants from Switzerland settled here for the first time. The hospitable and nice Smith family who hosted us had already decorated their house a month before: they had put skeletons, scarecrows, a smoking device and other spooky things in fron of the house. The Halloween holiday is somehting extraordinary on Swiss Avenu. We were told that in Texas this holiday is wonderfully celebrated in Dallas and in Dallas the best place for it is the Swiss Avenue. People come to the Swiss street from all parts of the city. Mr Darwin who hosted the Azerbaijani representatives tells us: We live in this street due to Halloween. My wife has been sitting at the door in a witch costume with a scythe in her hand for 18 years. “Welcome!” is written on the scyther. Mrs Myra Smith told us about the number of the people who came “to throw a hat” on the Halloween day: “When we moved here the ex owner of this house told me: Halloween is coming. You will have a lot of guests on the very day of the Halloween. Be ready for all this.” We bought a lot of sweets for the holiday. However, we could not have thought there would be so many guests. According to our calculations, we had a thousand two hundred people that day. After this, I switched off all the lights and went up to the second floor (that is what the person who runs out of gifts to give away needs to do). I was sitting in the dark room looking out of the window at the pople downstairs. Of course, I had considered the ex-owner’s advice but I did not expect so many people to come.
This holiday was wonderful, too. Mrs Tendeyka, the dear guest of the Smiths from Chicago, the professor of the University of Chicago and the winner of the biggest TV award “Emmy” had visited to celebrate this holiday. She was wearing the dress of the ancient Egyptian queens. Mr Smith asked five of his Korean students for help. He worked for the Bank of America for 25 years and got promoted to the vice president. However, he was wearing a Halloween costume, too. As for us, we were wearing ninja clothes for this celebration. We were seven people handing out candies to the guests. There were ten thousands of people who had come to the Swiss Avenue. You could see visitors from the infants to the elderly: poor, rich, white, black. People got out of their Chevrolet and made a holiday speech: “Either expel or accept!”. After this, they handed out the bags. We were able to give out between six and eight of them.
Another joyful event ended on Swiss Avenue. The Smiths enjoyed this holiday, too. Our visit across the ocean made this holiday lovelier. We were impressed by being in touch with such wonderful people and celebrating a holiday like our Novruz so unexpectedly far from Azerbaijan.
Vasif Sadigli
The Honorary Citizen of Dallas
