Belize on Reel: A Spooky Belizean Halloween
It’s only the first week in October and plans are already underway for all the festivities surrounding Halloween. Companies are decorating their lobbies and shop windows with spooky designs to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, which is observed on the thirty-first of this month. But while around the world, it’s a time used for children – and some adults – to dress up in fun costumes and go about trick or treating, there is also a spiritual tone behind the activities. In tonight’s Belize on Reel, News Five’s Duane Moody looks at Belizean Halloween.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Stores across the city are literally pulling out the cobwebs and spiders as well as skeletons and pumpkin decorations as Halloween quickly approaches. In Belize, like many other countries, it is a time when children dress in costumes and go to different locations collecting candy and treats. This trick or treat feature is done across urban and rural communities.
Kristy Pou
Kristy Pou, Resident, Eagle JEM Estate, Sand Hill Village
“We do a yearly trick or treat for our community. So homes who participate would normally decorate their homes, have sweets or treats for kids to come from the community and some of the community members do extend to probably your immediate family or so. So you will have the kids come up, dressed up in their costumes and then walk around the community for houses that are participating and at the end probably whoever wants to do a little socializing would socialize after. Halloween for us is more of just the kids getting together enjoying candy, not anything spiritual or evil or anything; it is more of the fun having the kids dressed up, interacting with each other and the sugar rush after having fun.”
Duane Moody
“How do you choose what to dress up your kids as?”
Kristy Pou
“Well my daughter decides what she wants to be. So every year she decides what she wants to be and of course I accommodate.”
But there is a spiritual link to Halloween, which is also known as All Hallows’ Eve. Father Jeremy Zipple says that while there are those who link the festivities to some demonic celebration, it really isn’t. He gives a history of how Halloween came about.
Fr. Jeremy Zipple
Father Jeremy Zipple, Jesuit Priest
“The historical and spiritual origins, the history if you want of Halloween is that it used to be, there was an old Celtic festival. The Celtic people that become Ireland; they had a celebration where they would dress up in costumes and light bonfires because it was a harvest festival so people used to really mark the seasons and it was the time of harvest and the fall. So they would have a big bonfire all night with costumes to ward away the ghosts and bring good omens, bring good spirits for their harvest to come. So that’s kind of the origin, but of course then the Christians came along and I think in the year 609, the Pope declared a Christian feast – the Feast of All Saints’ Day which we celebrate to this day. Fourteen hundred years later, we still celebrate it called the Feast of All Souls’ Day on the first of November. So that was kind of the Christianisation of the old Pagan Holiday.”
But the celebration is not limited to children; there are events that cater to adults as well. Popular clubs across the city are already planning their themed parties. Over in Caye Caulker, Barrier Reef Sports Bar and Grill has been having Halloween balls. Ninety percent of its patrons would dress up in costumes and this year, Andrea Reynolds says it’s a vampire theme.
On the Phone: Andrea Reynolds, Co-owner, Barrier Reef Sports Bar & Grill
“We’ve been doing this for probably ten years now. Every year we come up with a different theme. So for the past years, we had like Freaky Halloween Circus, Superhero Versus Villains. This year our theme is Vampire Ball. It is scheduled for Saturday, October twenty-eighth from nine to two a.m. This year we are doing the scariest costume, the best dressed couple, sexiest costume and for the theme we are doing the best dressed vampire. It’s free entrance, we do balloon drop, you could win tons of prizes, free jello shots throughout the night, beer drinking contest and whatever the DJ feels to get the crowd going.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
