The Weirdest Halloween Party in Italy
Even by Italian standards, it was strange and unsettling.
In 2014, when I first arrived in Calcata, Italy, with nothing but hope, love, and two duffel bags of form-fitting clothes that practically screamed “leave a twenty on the dresser,” I knew there’d be … adjustments. The language barrier aside, a slew of other face-smacking cultural differences awaited me, most of them wonderful and some of them not.
John had warned me about Halloween in Calcata before I’d even moved there, a party that went on in the village until dawn. For him, it was a nuisance. But I could see it so clearly in my mind’s eye—a medieval village sitting on a rock in the middle of a valley, full of artists and misfits; a crowd of revelers streaming up a hill; pulsing music; Olga’s subpar bakery churning out bad pizza and tasteless American-style cookies. I dreamed of seeing this strange and otherworldly event. It became a bucket-list item for me.
So you can imagine my excitement when I moved to Calcata in August of 2014, a mere two months before Halloween. My only fear was rain. The year before, a lengthy, torrential downpour had kept all the young folks in Rome. Calcata turned into a river. The hundreds of hotdogs and Jell-O shots two entrepreneurial Polish girls made to sell that year sat untouched. The only tourists that showed up were an intrepid band of drunk Norwegians who proceeded to get even drunker at an empty restaurant.
But the big day finally arrived, and my grabby little eyes were ready to take in the spectacle. Conveniently for John, he was doing a jazz concert in Poland, far from the insanity of Calcata, which was just as well since by 9:00PM, the piazza was a churning sea of people. Not even the brutal cold was enough to deter them.
I stood shivering in the piazza, wondering if curiosity was going to outweigh impending hypothermia, dismayed to realize that I was likely too old to last until dawn—not in this weather, at least—and might have to content myself with watching from my warmer balcony. But then, like an answer to a prayer, two men unfurled a long red carpet, music started to play, and a show began—an awful, hokey, charming, singularly Italian show that, fortunately, I was able to capture on video.
Teeth chattering, I watched in horror and fascination as various performers came out in costumes and began to … dare I call it dancing? The first one did nothing more than strut back and forth, flapping her sleeves. I kept waiting for something to happen, for the “real show” to begin, but that actually was the show, except I was seeing it through the eyes of an American who grew up believing only professional-level entertainers were allowed to perform in public. If you weren’t a proficient, you didn’t dare ask for people to pay attention to you, right? More to the point, an American audience would boo you off the stage. Yet here were these amateur entertainers in their fancy costumes who, without a trace of irony, stalked up and down a red carpet, no more self-conscious or apologetic than a child wearing a Batman cape.
Next up was a woman sporting a wig and—for no discernible reason—cracking a whip. Beside her, a man in a blood-stained tux waved his arms around. At 1:10 in the video, you can see the woman’s wig fall off, which the man gallantly flails around, trying to make it look like a part of the act, while she double downs on “whipping” him. The whole thing was so bizarre, I kept looking around to see if anybody else was as gobsmacked as I was.
They weren’t.
My poor American brain couldn’t accept that some Italians perform for the joy of performing. Whether they are skilled enough to deserve that attention doesn’t enter the equation. There’s something refreshingly healthy and distinctly non-American about that.
The pièce de résistance came in the form of a woman performing a 18th century strip tease on the church steps. Hey, when I enter a church, the holy water boils, but even a heathen like me knows you’re not supposed to take your clothes off in front of a church named for the Baby Jesus. This woman had zero f**s to give. Amid the screams of a very unhappy toddler, she shed her clothes with all the clumsy non-eroticism of a TSA pat-down.
Now, this did elicit comments from the audience, not all of them flattering. One man called her a “prosciuttona,” or ham hock, perhaps in reference to her meaty thighs. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t make note of this, but later on Facebook, Ham Hock made some appallingly racist comments and refused to apologize for them, so … what can I say? Things happen. People get written about.
A little backstory on Ham Hock. She was the weekend concubine of some poor old fool, Avvocato V***, a lawyer who had one of the most beautiful houses in Calcata, coveted by all who beheld it. Avvocato V*** bought her a grotta, a cave apartment, in Calcata before shuffling off this mortal coil. Not sure he left her the house, though. I’ll get back to you on that.
All this to say that Halloween is celebrated a little differently in Italy, recently trending away from its religious tradition as All Saints’ Day and becoming an array of secular events and costume parties. For the first time ever, I spotted trick-or-treaters downstairs in our village (Italians say dolcetto o scherzetto, “little sweet or little trick”.) I might have felt worse about not having candy for the imps were it not for the five flights of stairs I’d have to slog back up to our apartment.
October 31-November 2 (All Souls’ Day) are actual holidays, as in vacation. I learned that the hard way my first year in Italy. Having no idea a three-day holiday was fast approaching and that every store in the area would be closed, I failed to plan ahead. My daughter and I drove all over hell’s half acre looking for anyplace to get food and ended up eating gelato for dinner, three nights running. Not that my daughter complained, of course. I did manage to find a box of penne somewhere and cooked it, but then I accidently set it down in a pan of soapy water, so back to the gelateria we went.
Now, Italy is awash in “American-like” Halloween traditions done with Italian flair. In Palermo, there is the Capuchin Crypt, which is decorated with 4,000 skeletons’ worth of bones. Rome has one, too. There are also elaborate costume parties, horror movie festivals, ghost tours, and pub crawls.
In the Le Marche region, a medieval village called Corinaldo (it bills itself as the “Italian Capital of Halloween”) goes all out with a fire festival, lights, and music. If John weren’t allergic to crowds, I’d surely drag him there.
I did eventually exit the party that night in Calcata, although not because of the banality of the entertainment or the freezing temperatures. Remember those form-fitting clothes? Apparently, they were attracting the wrong kind of attention in a crowd of tipsy Italian men. A flustered cop ordered me back to my apartment, and frankly, I was too cold and too over it to argue.
The memory of that night stays with me, especially after Covid turned mass celebrations into dismal, socially distanced affairs. Even this diehard introvert hopes for a return to the Before Times when we stood too close, breathed too hard, and watched silly people doing very silly things.
What was your weirdest Halloween? I would LOVE to hear. Feel free to leave your comments below.
You make me realize of what a sheltered life I have lived. What an adventure!
-- two duffel bags of form-fitting clothes that practically screamed “leave a twenty on the dresser,”
Me, I'm always more like Uncle Creepy in a rusty van with "FREE CANDY" finger painted on the side.