Welcome to Anthesteria, the Ancient Greek version of Halloween, by Saviour Pirotta

The shops are full of Halloween stuff at the moment. Plastic skulls, skeletons, fake fur spiders and grinning pumpkins greet you from every shop window, be it a charity shop or a full-on smart clothes emporium. I am always wary of commercialised festivals whose original meaning has been lost in a mountain of tat and the possibilities of instant profit (Dropping the Saint from Valentine's Day is a particular bugbear of mine.)

Yet I have to admit, Halloween can be fun and even if I don't tend to open the door to trick-or-treaters myself, I do like to indulge in spooky stories when the nights are dark and Christmas is still nine weeks away.

I am fully aware that spooky stories hook the kids and, no matter what book I am promoting, I always include a ghost story about the subject in my events.  This was a little tricky when I first started promoting The Stolen Spear, a story set in the stone age but I soon adapted a Victorian ghost story featuring Neolithic artifacts.

Which leads me to the main reason for writing this post. We tend to think of Halloween as an Irish import into America, a festival based on the ancient Christian festival of All Hallows' Eve itself based on the pagan harvest festival of Samhain. But did you know that other religions and indeed ancient civilisations have/had their own versions of the festival?  In Hinduism, September sees the celebration of Pitru Paksha, when believers ensure that the souls of their dead ancestors are at rest.

Danse Macabre

The Ancient Romans had two festivals similar to Halloween. The Feralia, held in February, celebrated the dead. People would bring gifts of fruit and flowers to their ancestors' graves. The Lemuria, a three day festival held in mid-May, honoured the souls of people who'd died a violent death.

My favourite of these spooky festivals is the Anthesteria, one of four Ancient Greek festivals held every year in Athens. It lasted three days during the full moon in our February. On the third day, the ghosts of the dead were welcomed and entertained in the city, with people leaving food and wine for them on the doorstep.  It always vanished by the morning. Slaves were served dinner by their masters, inverting the usual order of things. The head of the family would paint tar on the doorstop to stop the ghost from actually coming into the house and at the end of the festival, the children would chant: Anthesteria is over. Ghosts be gone!

The festival provides the backdrop for my Ancient Greek Mystery, Shadow of the Centaurs. It was a way to engage children with everyday details of a popular period in history, and to draw parallels between childhoods in long-gone civilisations, different cultures and the modern world.

Saviour Pirotta's Shadow of the Centaurs is illustrated by Freya Hartas and published by Bloomsbury. His latest book, set in Stone Age, is called The Stolen Spear and is published by Maverick. His play, Granny's Exploding Toilet, opens at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on the 29th October. Follow him on twitter @spirotta and on instagram at saviour2858.