All hallows eve, when the dead are allowed to walk the Earth. Other European cultures have it too, the day of the dead.
The *Day* of the Dead is the 1st of November, All Hallows' Day or All Saints' Day, or the Feast of All Saints, which memorializes all the saints unknown and uncanonized. (The 2nd of November is All Souls' Day or Soulmas, or the Feast of All the Faithful Departed.) The name "Hallowe'en" applies to the night before All Hallows, just like Christmas Eve and Christmas: a hangover from the Jewish calendar, where all holidays begin at sunset on the day before. A friend of mine said to me once "On erev [the day before] Hallowe'en ..." and I interrupted him: "No, no, Hallowe'en is already an erev!"
All Saints picked up a lot of energy in Mexico from vaguely similar Aztec traditions. It was then copied to the Philippines, which used to be administered out of Mexico. (Hence the riddle: What happened in the Philippines on December 31st, 1845?" The answer is "Absolutely nothing", because it was skipped when the Philippines transitioned from Mexico time, GMT-6, to its current time zone, GMT+8.) It is even observed as a secular holiday in thoroughly Muslim Indonesia!
On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 12:42 AM Grant Taylor via TUHS <
tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
There's also Christmas in July, or something like that.
Yes, Ymas (as in "the middle of [austral] winter, six months before Xmas".