Speaker Simon Baldwin - The Origins of Halloween

At the meeting of the Rotary Club of St Andrews Kilrymont on 25th October there were a number of items for note before the main speaker.  The Kingsbarns Golf Event which had been held the day before had been a great success and enjoyed by all the participants.  James Yule was welcomed on his return from his sponsored trek along part of the Great Wall of China.  It was clear that it had been a great experience for James and a successful fund raiser for Kidneys for Life.  John Spittal reported on his visit to Zerilda Park Primary School in Cape Town, South Africa where he met the 5 children the club is supporting through the Adopt A Learner programme.  There was also a raffle, with funds going to End Polio Now, the joint project between Rotary International and partners to eradicate polio.  The proceeds from the raffle will be added to those from other events arranged for February 2017.  To date rotarians have helped to immunise 2.5 billion children in 122 countries. 

The speaker for the evening was club member Simon Baldwin who chose to talk about "something relevant to this time of year" which turned out to be Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Days and proceeded to give members a whirlwind tour of the globe illustrating the varied customs and traditions - from Pangangaluluwa in the Philippines where plants disappear on Halloween only to reappear the next day, to the Czech Republic where there it is the tradition to have an empty chair by the fireplace for ghosts of ancestors to sit, on to Germany where household knives are hidden at Halloween for fear that angry ghosts will stab the living.  Some festivals are elaborate three days of celebrations  - Mexico's Day of the Dead in addition to parades and dressing up extends to parties in graveyards including a bit of housekeeping on the grave stones.  Most of the traditions started in Ireland where people would dress up and sit in the fields overnight at Halloween to scare spirits away.  Parents would hide treats or "tricks" in barmbrack bread for the children to find. Trick or Treat and big parades like the annual one held in Greenwich Village, New York became the big events we know of in the USA.  Simon then introduced the club to the "punkie's" song - punkies are an English tradition of carving beetroot into the shape of roses.  Simon's talk gave rise to reminiscences from other members about Halloween traditions in their own home towns. 

Jim Allison gave the vote of thanks for an entertaining talk.