dis manibus

it's all hallows eve eve eve! the night before the night before the night before all hallows day. are you ready?

there are a lot of holy days and celebrations around the world and through history. it's all there, in wikipedia. reading about all hallows day leads to all souls day to the day of the dead to parentalia. parentalia is an ancient roman holiday dedicated to veneration of ancestors. sounds like a made-up word, don't you think, but obviously we get our word "parent" from the latin "parent". or, you know, something like that.

parentalia was a 9-day festival in rome's "classical" period. [i am not all that familiar with the periods of roman history, but i believe the classical came between the country & western and the hip-hop.] for 9 days these people celebrated the dead, visited the cemetery, ate cake, and drank wine. 9 days of cake! 9 days is longer than the dratted dragon boat festival that closes down every chinese vendor i deal with at work and must be accommodated in purchase orders. clearly the romans didn't have contracts to fulfill.

the 9-day festival of parentalia ended with feralia, a public holy day wherein the caked-up masses made offerings to the "manes" which in this case the english word for lionhair is not derived from the latin in which manes were malevolent spirits of the dead. so, parentalia was for honoring ancestors and feralia was for placating manes. all this contributed to keeping the dead in their graves and not out roaming about causing mayhem.

parentalia took place in february, so it's not closely related datewise with samhain, an ancient nordic-celtic festival celebrating the dead and placating their angry spirits, which takes place around all hallows eve. it's samhain that the christians commandeered when creating the all hallows and all souls celebrations.

however, we do practice placation of potentially angry spirits in february, specifically on the 14th.