Forget the pumpkins, we’ve got our own Mohini and Mahasona!

Is Halloween totally alien to us or could we see it as an extension of our culture of thovils and demons?

Grinning pumpkins lit by candles, darkened rooms decorated with bats and people dressed as ghosts! These are the essential elements of a typical Halloween, celebrated on October 31 each year.

Halloween, earlier celebrated only by Westerners and a segment of Sri Lanka’s upper class, is now gaining in popularity. Like Valentine’s Day, which was not so popular a few decades ago, Halloween has the potential to become another regular celebration.
Halloween is one of the oldest holidays still celebrated in the western world, its popularity perhaps second only to Christmas. But where did this peculiar custom come from?

Halloween is said to have originated among the Celts in Ireland, Britain and France and is derived from an ancient Celtic fire festival, Samhain. Celebrated on October 31, Samain marked the end of the pagan year and the beginning of winter. Ancients believed that on that night the barriers between our world and the spirit world were at their weakest. …weak enough, to allow the souls of the dead to return to earth in search of the warmth of their former lives.

In ancient times, bonfires were lit to impart heat and strength to the sun for the coming winter, whilst keeping away any mischievious spirits who might otherwise have delighted in causing fright!

Of course it was also an excuse for a big party.

The carved jack-o'-lantern, lit from within is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In England, turnips were hollowed out and made into lanterns with faces - intended to scare away any troublemakers from the spirit world. When this tradition crossed the Atlantic to North America, turnips were replaced by the pumpkins which were far more plentiful. These lanterns, were intended to guide the spirits to a place where a portion of the festival meal would be left for them.

Halloween decorations are mainly based on scary symbols like bats, ghosts and supernatural creatures like Dracula. Halloween has become popular in America, where children dress in ghoulish costumes and go out to 'trick or treat', playing tricks on their neighbours unless they are given a treat, usually of sweets. They get the real excitement of the event by wearing different costumes and designing creative decorations.

Whatever the celebrations abroad, Halloween organizers in Sri Lanka are creative enough to localize some part of it. Instead of western demons, local demons were substituted. “Mahasona” is the most popular local demon that is now being seen in local Halloween parties. “Mohini” is another concept which I recently witnessed in Halloween party costumes. It seems creative Sri Lankans will find more ways of localizing the event.

However, not everyone is ready to embrace Halloween. The sceptics complain that the event shouldn’t be promoted locally, fearing that it will become another Valentine’s Day in the future. “These are events celebrated by Westerners. We shouldn’t be embracing everything that is coming from them and should learn to value the concepts behind the local events which are diminishing,” said one critic. Others did not take it so seriously. “Well, it is just about fun… we haven’t thought too much whether it’ll be turmoil to our culture. We just needed a new concept to enjoy and we adopted Halloween to party,” said an organizer of a Halloween event.

Probably, Halloween is not a totally new concept to our culture. Remember the “thovil” in the good old days? It was done to cure people who were scared by various local demons like “Mahasona”, “Kalu Kumara”, “Mohini” or “Reeri Yaka”. When the ceremony was performed, the whole village was present to experience a scary night. Nowadays, there are hardly any ‘thovil’ ceremonies even in remote villages. But the instincts and experience gained from these scary events are part of our culture and Halloween might easily fill that vacuum.