The Sicilian Day of the Dead

The Day of the Dead is most well known as the Mexican holiday called 'Día de Muertos'.

This holiday involves family and friends gathering to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died and to help support their spiritual journey. In 2008, the tradition was inscribed in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, the same as our fascinating Puppet Theatres that we have in Sicily who are also on this list. In recent years the festival has moved out of cemeteries and is now celebrated in the form of parties and parades including the annual Day of the Dead parade.

However have you heard about the Sicilian Day of the Dead?

The Sicilian Day of The Dead or in Sicilian, 'U Juornu re Muorti' is celebrated on the 2nd November.

The history of this festival goes way back to the 7th Century and it was traditionally a day to honour all the world's Saints.

All Saints Day known as 'Ognissanti' in Italy falls on November 1st and it is a national holiday.

All Saints Day is also known as All Hallows Day which makes the 31st October All Hallow's Eve or as most of us know it Halloween.

Halloween is not generally celebrated in Sicily but in modern times Sicilian children do like to enjoy the fun by dressing up as witches and ghosts, amongst many other colourful costumes and themes to go Trick or Treating and where could be a more better place to Trick or Treat than in Sicily, one of the most famous places in the world renowned for it sweet delights?

On the night of 1st November Sicilian parents and grandparents traditionally buy Frutta di Martorana which is marzipan shaped into fruits and vegetables and at this time of year ghoulish shapes, which children are given as gifts on 2nd November, All Souls Day.

The sweets are usually hidden in the house. Some lucky Sicilian children might even get toys and in the supermarkets and shops you will find toys for this occasion which might just trick you into thinking that Christmas shopping has started early.

The tradition is that 'defunti', the ghosts of deceased family members, steal into the home and hide the gifts for their young descendants. The children are told to behave in the hope that they will receive these gifts.

The art of marzipan modelling Frutta di Martorana, known as 'Pasta Reale' started in Palermo and they are named after the convent in the city where the nuns once hung marzipan oranges on the trees to play a prank on a visiting bishop. Trick or Treat? The bishop was so impressed by the convincing abundance of replica fruit that he declared it a miracle to have such a bounty of citrus at this time of year.

Another tradition on All Souls Day is the thought that deceased ancestors revisiting their old homes will be in need of replenishment after their journey from the underworld and so it is common for Sicilian families to set an extra empty place at their table.

Whilst this might all sound quite morbid this memory of the deceased is turned into a celebratory occasion.

Traditionally the 2nd of November would start by eating 'Muffoletta', a round bread loaf served hot, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper, oregano, anchovies and slice of 'primosale' cheese. After breakfast the family then head to church for a mass remembering the dead and then they will head to the cemetery to take candles and flowers to lay on the graves.

Typically the flowers to take are chrysanthemums and local florists will be heaving with bunches upon bunces in an array of bright and pastel colour blooms. At this time of year you will also see chrysanthemums being sold from the back of Apes, the three wheeled little vehicles so popular in Sicily.

My English friend Teresa once told me a story about when she first arrived in Sicily. Teresa and her friend Sue had come to Taormina on holiday and after falling in love with Sicily they tore up their return plane tickets to the UK and the rest is history. They found work in hotels and they had only been on the island a couple of months when they noticed that at the end of October there were beautiful chrysanthemums being sold in the market. So they bought a few bunches and took them back to their room to brighten it up. The next day the chambermaid came to clean their room and she started yelling to the other maids. "Quick, quick, come and look they have got the flowers of the dead in their room". They went on to tell them that they should take them out of their room because it was bad luck to have them indoors.

I can remember clearly the night we arrived in Sicily to view our Sicilian house, it was 2nd November 2007. As we wandered around the roof terrace as the sun set there was breath taking views of Mount Etna, the Ionian Sea, green mountains and the hillside hamlet of Castelmola was clearly visible. As we viewed our potential new Sicilian home we could see something in the close distance with many flickering lights. I asked our Sicilian big brother what this place was and he explained that it was the local cemetery and that everyone would be there that day visiting the graves of loved ones they had lost.

As we are now usually in Sicily at this time of year I always go to visit our cemetery on 2nd November with our lovely English friend Norma who lives close to us. I can remember my first visit and it brought tears to my eyes because the Sicilians view All Souls Day as not a day of sadness but a day of celebration and love because they believe that their loved ones awaken and celebrate with them. The atmosphere is quite emotional.

It might sound like a strange thing to say but the cemetery looks absolutely beautiful on this day adorned with hundreds and hundreds of fresh flowers with candles flickering as darkness draws in. Families come together and you might even hear some wailing at the gravesides. Some mourners even bring a picnic to have at the grave and it is also an ideal chance for the local women to have a good gossip.

Our local cemetery is positioned on a hillside and there are many steps and different levels under the watchful eye of Mount Etna in the distance. Fresh flowers usually adorn recent burials but usually most of the flowers are made from bright coloured silk and plastic which fade very quickly in the Sicilian sun.

Most graves are built into walls which are accessible by ladders that can be moved around for mourners. The paths and steps in the cemetery are very narrow and the graves are very close. Some are stacked on top of each other as families would want to be interred together for companionship in the afterlife. There is many elaborate grand stone coffins like sarcophagi with some big enough to hold a whole family and there are also family crypts akin to small houses. Some graves in our local cemetery date way back to the late 17th century with photos that have turned a shade of sepia over time. Many of the older graves are adorned with stone statues such as angels, virgin marys, crucifixes and cherubs and Norma always tells me the stories about some of the inhabitants.

Frutta di Martorana are not the only sweets traditionally eaten on this occasion. You will also find Ossa dei Morti and Rame di Napoli.

Trick ... Ossa dei Morti (Bones of the Dead) are hard crunchy biscuits made from almonds. They are long and flat and sometimes will have knuckles on the end to make them look more authentic. Creepy and not the best looking of biscuits they are in fact delicious and if you do come across some mind your teeth! As you bite into them they do actually feel like you would imagine bone to be and the reason they are so hard is because they are twice baked. Because of this they are great to dip in a espresso or a cappuccino to slightly soften them.

Treat ... Rame di Napoli are soft chocolate spiced biscuits and I can never eat enough of them. Despite the name they are not from Naples but in fact they hail from the city of Catania and the name means 'Copper of Naples". They are made using ingredients such as sugar, milk, flour, cocoa powder, honey, orange marmalade and cinnamon then covered in melted dark chocolate and decorated with chopped local pistachio. Are you dribbling yet?

As I mentioned earlier the Sicilians do not celebrate Halloween but if you want a real bone chilling experience in Sicily then Palermo is the place to go.

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are burial catacombs in the city. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary historical record.

Palermo's Capuchin monastery outgrew its original cemetery in the 16th century and the monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599 they mummified one of their dead brothers and placed him in the catacombs.

The bodies were dehydrated on the racks of ceramic pipes in the catacombs. Some of the bodies were embalmed and others enclosed in sealed glass cabinets. The monks were preserved with their everyday clerical clothing .

Originally the catacombs were intended only for the dead friars. However, in the following centuries it became a status symbol to be entombed into the Capuchin catacombs. In their wills, local luminaries would ask to be preserved in certain fine clothes. Relatives would visit to pray for the deceased and also to maintain the body.

The last burials date from the 1920's and one of the very last to be interred was Rosalia Lombardo, then nearly two years old, whose body is still remarkably intact to this day, preserved with a specific embalming procedure where hence she has been given the nickname the "Sicilian Sleeping Beauty".

The catacombs contain about 8000 corpses and 1252 mummies.

On the east coast of Sicily we also have a crypt with mummies, on a much smaller scale, in the hilltop village of Savoca. Last year I took our friend Harvey there who was visiting us in Sicily for the first time. He declared on entering the crypt "I don't want to look but I cannot look away".

Happy Halloween everyone ......

If you enjoyed this Blog post then you might enjoy these ones from my archive

"Savoca" https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2015/09/savoca.html

"Making Sweet & Sour Pumpkin" https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2019/10/making-sicilian-sweet-and-sour-pumpkin.html

"My Top 35 Palermo Travel Tips" https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2018/08/my-top-35-palermo-tips.html

"20 Sicilian Sweets & Desserts You Must Try" https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2020/09/20-sicilian-sweets-desserts-you-must-try.html

“Sicily’s 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites” https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2020/09/sicilys-7-unesco-world-heritage-sites.html

"Pupi Salamanca ... the Master Puppet Maker" https://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2017/11/pupi-salamanca-master-puppet-maker.html

Photo Album