Does Slovenia have Halloween

Answer 1

Slovenia traditionally celebrates the All Hallow's Day (Halloween is actually All Hallow's eve) in a different way then for instance USA. The origins of the holiday are the same, since this is belived to be a day when the dead visit the earth, but in Slovenia, as in many other countries, this is the time to remember the departed and show respects to them. November 1st is a bank holiday, called "The day of rememberance of the dead" and Slovenians traditionaly visit cemetaries on that day to pay their respects. It must be stated that even before capitalism came to Eatern Europe, this holiday was already becomming very commercial and florists and candle makers make huge profit out of it.

In recent years, however, the commercialized American version of Halloween is celebrated more and more often to much dismay of ethnologists. In Slovenia Halloween is called The nigt of the Withces (Noč Čarovnic). The origins of this name are unclear, but possibly it came to the country only trough the cinema. When the first Halloween movie came out, Slovene audience woudl of course not understand it's meaning if it was transleted directly into "All Hallows Eve", so a name "Night of the Witches" was used. This has some loose base in the ethnology, since Central Europe had it's own "Night of the Witches", but that was on Walburga's eve, the night before May 1st. The strange change of it's name had some effect on the way Halloween is celebrated in Slovenia, since it's more about Witches then being a day for a mascerade. Some tourist destination for instance offer "Wizards and Withces" balls.

Slovenia also traditionally has a holiday that is very simmilar to American Halloween. It is Pust (the Carneval) celebrated just bofere the lent period (40 days before Ester - that is in the end of February or begiining of March, depending on the moon cycles). It begins on Saturday and ends on Ahs Wednesday. It is a time of mascerades and trick'or'treating and several different traditional events take place. For instance the demonic "Kurent" processions in Ptuj, or the processions of traditional masks "Laufarji" in Cerkno. It is a time when authority over the country is given to the Carnival prince (called Pust) and people are allowed to be wild and disrespectful to the authority. The celebrations end with Pust being put to trial (on Tuesday) as a culprit for everything that is going wrong in the country. Being found guilty he is traditionally executed (a straw doll is burned for instance) and buried with much protocol on Ash Wednesday.