On the border between October and November, on the border between life and death, we remember the souls of those who have passed on. For Catholics, life is celebrated – with lit cemeteries, baskets of food, the best clothes and lots and lots of flowers. At the Orthodox, it is commemorated – a sober atmosphere, with a lit candle each for the life beyond, for the life “to come”. The interwar press did its duty and captured, in text and pictures, what the Day of the Dead meant to Romanians all over the country.
Photo report from the newspaper “Illustrated Reality”
Why do westerners celebrate the Day of the Dead in the fall, and us easterners in the spring
Lazarus’ Saturday is also the Saturday of the Dead. In the Western Church, the day of the dead is held in autumn, on November 1, when nature begins to die, when you no longer see any leaves on the trees, the flowers are almost all withered, even the grass is yellowed and withered. The Western Church then says to people: this is how you will wither and enter the grave. So put flowers on graves and lights. As these lights melt and burn, so will your life melt and end. Remember your dead, now in the beginning of winter, and pray for their souls.
The Eastern Church is more mysterious and profound. She does not celebrate the day of the dead in autumn, when nature dies, but in spring, when everything comes to life. When the first violins put out their beautiful heads towards the rising sun, when the chirping of birds invigorates you, when the buds begin to swell and snap, when the sycamores began to adorn the orchards and valleys, then the Resurrection of Lazarus is celebrated, which reminds us of the Resurrection of the commons. The Eastern Church then says to its believers: Do you see how nature revives, do you see how our hope grows, how everything becomes clear, everything refreshes, everything seems more cheerful? Have you lost your parents, husbands, wives, children? Not forever. They will also revive, as the fields and gardens and forests revived. But that they may rise to the resurrection of life, pray for them, put wreaths on their graves and do not lose sight of their graves. Because the priests did not really interpret the meaning of this holiday to the faithful, our church does not celebrate the Saturday of the Dead with as much enthusiasm as the Western church celebrates the Day of the Dead. Their cemeteries are on November 1st a sea of lights and a garden full of flowers, while with us on the Saturday of the Dead you can barely see a single flower, and the graves are unkempt, undigged and undecorated. Bad enough.
Images published in the newspaper “Oglinda lumii” from 1927
At Blaj, they are trying to bring about this interweaving. But it doesn’t really happen. Hair. parish priest Vasile Moldovan served a parastas and preached in the cemetery on the Saturday of the Dead, but there were not even a third of the people as on the Day of the Dead of the Western Catholics, and the graves were almost all unkempt. In order for the world to celebrate the Saturday of the Dead, the choir of theologians should sing at the cemetery, more priests should serve, orders should be given to decorate the graves with lights and candles, and all the faithful should gather at their graves. We are curious, how this Saturday of the Dead will be celebrated next year.
“Unirea Poporului” newspaper from 1931
The days of the dead in the Roman calendar
“Humanity consists of the living and the dead, and the latter are the most numerous. The dead, through the settlements, through the laws, through the beliefs instituted and created by them, rule us. That is why always and everywhere, man bows before those who were, feeling that the billions of the deceased rule the millions of today.” The Romanian people felt this connection between the past and the present very strongly. The family was composed for the Romans of the entire line of ancestors and descendants; the state also included the vanished generations, which had founded and strengthened it by endless sacrifices. This pious collective gratitude was manifested through the cult of the dead, considered a holy, religious duty.
Many of the old pagan customs have been preserved to this day. Holidays seem to outlive religions. Just as Christmas adopted some traditions of the Saturnalia, as the German word for Easter derives from the name of a pagan deity (Ostern-Ostera), so on the Day of the Dead many Roman customs are renewed. The ancients even had several days dedicated to the dead: the Ferals in February, established according to legend, by Aeneas himself, in honor of his father Ahisej. All work, public or private, was interrupted. The temples were closed, there were no marriages on this feast of the dead. “The dead are modest, they are satisfied with so little”, sings Ovidiu tenderly. Flowers placed in a piece of pottery, fruit, a few grains of salt were deposited on their graves. Of course, the rich, like today, made them more expensive offerings: wonderful wreaths, etc. There was also the superstitious element: “the dead walk”, people say now. This was also believed by the simple people in Antiquity. Beside the disinterested cult of souls cleansed of the petty passions of life and all earthly stains (“manes”, the Latin name for the soul of the deceased, meaning “the pure, the bright ones”), there was no lack of superstitious practices, spells and charms. Ovid presents us with such a scene, in which an old witch makes sacrifices for some girls (could it be otherwise?) in honor of the mother of the Laris (that is, the dead), Muta. This goddess was undoubtedly the personification of the earth, which like a good mother receives into its depths the remains of children. It is “Mute”, because it represents the eternal silence of the grave.
Images published in the newspaper “Oglinda lumii” from 1928
In May, the ancients had another celebration of the dead: the Lemuria. On this day, the father of the family would get up at midnight and, with his bare feet and his coat fluttering, throw some black beans behind him, muttering these words: “I redeem myself and my people.” He felt as if he needed to apologize, in addition to those who have passed from this world, for daring to live. It’s a deep idea, and the Greek philosopher Anaximenes said that “everything that exists must die to atone for the sin of living”. The 8th of November was also a day of the dead: the gates to the underground empire were open, the shadows of the disappeared wandered among the living, all public and private activity was suspended… From the bottom of the centuries, the same melancholy of man emerges before the need to disappear and pass…
“Patria” newspaper, 1931
