Old traditions.

At the restaurant at lunchtime yesterday I saw an item on the television news involving children going from house to house asking for not just sweets but bread and fruit and whatever people wanted to give. The children were dressed in their ordinary clothes. No Hallowele”en costumes and masks. No gruesome make-up. And some of the grown-ups were out on the street with tables offering specially baked bread with chorizo inside.

Of course, the 1st of November is All Saints’ Day, a public holiday in many places in Europe, a day for visiting the family graves and tidying them up, as at the start of Almodóvar’s film “Volver”. I read that in Mexico they have parties in the cemeteries to include the dead family members in the celebrations. In Italy they take two days holiday: November 1st is Ognisanti, All Saints’ Day, and November 2nd is il Giorno dei Morti, the Day of the Dead, for visiting the graveyard. In some parts of Italy, children receive gifts from their dead relatives. Nice but a bit spooky!

In the UK we just forget about the dead, it seems to me. And October 31st, Hallowe’en, seems to be taking over, American style, in many countries.

Anyway, tradition still holds in parts of Portugal, in small villages at least. The tradition is called Pão por Deus, Bread for God. In some places it is called Dia do Bolinho, The Day of Cake. Children up to the age of about ten go round receiving gifts of food stuff. Bakers give bread, fruit shops give fruit or chestnuts. Some people give sweets or money.

There is a rhyme that goes with the day:-

Bolinhos e bolinhós
Para mim e para vós
Para dar aos finados
Que estão mortos e enterrados
À porta de vera cruz,
truz, truz
A senhora está lá dentro
Assentada numa banquinha
Faz favor de vir cá fora
P’ra nos dar um tosttãozinho, ou um bolinho


Bolihnos e bolinhós (cakes and buns)
For me and you,
To give to the deceased
Who are dead and buried
At the beautiful, beautiful cross
Knock, knock
The lady who is inside
Sitting on a stool
Please get up
To come and give us a penny or a little bun

The children go around from quite early in the morning and greet the people who open their doors to them with “Pão por Deus”. In the Azores, people give them a cake shaped like a skull (just as in Spain you can buy “huesos de santos” or saints’ bones made from marzipan, with realistic looking marrow!).

There are records that date this tradition going back to the 15th century. Pretty impressive! One suggestion is that it was reinforced back in 1755 when the great Lisbon earthquake took place on All Saints’ Day. The vast majority of the city’s residents lost everything and the survivors had to ask for bread in neighbouring towns.

And here is a link to a clip about some children at a nursery school preparing for Pão por Deus.

My small granddaughter’s nursery, bu contrast, put on a Hallowe’en Party with children too small to know what was going on dressed up as skeletons and other such strange things!