Halloween and Ognissanti in Italy: Trick-or-Treat Meets All Saints

Ciao! I’m Giulia. Every October my foreign students ask the same thing: “Do Italians even do Halloween?” The answer tells you everything about Italy: yes, kids in costumes ring your bell on October 31st — and the very next morning, the whole country turns solemn, puts on dark coats, and files to the cemetery with flowers. Two festivals, two moods, 12 hours apart. Let me explain both.

October 31: Halloween, Italian style

Halloween (la notte di Halloween) arrived from America via TV and stuck — especially with kids and twenty-somethings. What to expect:

• Kids ring bells shouting “Dolcetto o scherzetto!” (trick or treat). Keep candy ready if you live in a residential neighborhood.
• Costume parties (feste in maschera) in bars, clubs, and piazzas. Adults dress up nearly as much as kids.
• Carved pumpkins (zucche intagliate) appear in shop windows and on doorsteps — though the jack-o’-lantern craft level rarely matches American suburbs.
• Schools often run Halloween-themed English lessons. Convenient for me: ghosts make excellent vocabulary (il fantasma, la strega, il pipistrello).

Useful words: la zucca (pumpkin), il costume (costume), il ragno (spider), la ragnatela (cobweb), dolcetto (little sweet), scherzetto (little trick).

November 1: Ognissanti — the real holiday

The next morning, the tone flips completely. Ognissanti (All Saints’ Day) is a national public holiday: schools, offices, and shops close. Families:

1. Visit the cemetery (andare al cimitero) to clean graves (pulire le tombe).
2. Leave chrysanthemums (crisantemi — never gift these to the living; they’re funeral flowers!) and light red votive candles (lumini or ceri).
3. Attend Mass and then gather for a long family lunch.

On November 2nd (la commemorazione dei defunti, All Souls’ Day) the remembrance continues, though it’s a working day. The traditonal sweets of the period — ossa dei morti (“bones of the dead” cookies) and fave dei morti — are worth trying if your bakery makes them.

Register note: around Ognissanti, keep the tone respectful. Joking about i morti (the dead) the way you joked about ghosts last night will not land well.

Quick vocabulary recap

Want the autumn vocabulary to stick? My free 10-lesson crash course builds the everyday base first — and if you’re spending the holidays in Italy, my supermarket survival guide (draft) will save you at the checkout. Buon Halloween… e buona festa di Ognissanti.