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.

A good excuse to read history books

I have always been passionate about History and read anything I can lay my hands on. When I was a kid I saved pocket money and birthday money for almost a year to buy the Larousse encyclopaedias above.
 My Dad encouraged my love of History and decided to make me a museum. He could actually make and fix anything, including putting an entire central heating system into our house in the '60s. Trouble is he was rather slow which drove Mum mad. Took him over a year and we just had to freeze while we waited.

Dad and I used to walk around with our eyes glued to ground, picking up anything of interest. Over the years I collected fossils ( and bought some) ancient pieces of wood, broken bits of pottery and even mined a tiny bit of amethyst from the Arctic Circle a few years ago. But my collection was so important to me when I was a kid that Dad decided to make me a proper museum case; a wooden box with a sloping glass roof which opens and allows you to view the collection stored inside. It was modelled exactly on the cases in the Natural History Museum which Dad took us three kids and Mum to most Sunday afternoons. I was allowed to paint it - to Dad's exact requirements of course.
 Sand down the wood lightly, apply undercoat and three top coats of white gloss. A lesson for life. My paintwork doesn't peel.

Dad's great mathematical and engineering knowledge stood him in good stead in the RAF helping to develop radar.

In my bedroom with my little bureau to write on and do my homework, my book case groaning with novels and history books, I could glance to one side ( it was a very small room) and peruse the contents of my 'museum' to my heart's desire. I took History to A Level and also made it my main subject for my teacher's degree.

Becoming a writer has given me the permission to seek out untold stories from History and to conduct primary and secondary research to my heart's desire.

 My first novel, for adults, Secret Territory, set in 1975 and in post war London, contains the untold story of a Jewish underground group, The Irgun, active in London at that time. My research was based on interviews with former members of the group and to date I haven't seen any further books on this subject.

My second novel, HIDDEN, for Young Adults contains original research about some of the little ships which went to Dunkirk in May 1940 to rescue the BEF. I had great fun going over one of these little ships, Count Dracula, which is moored on Hayling Island and no longer makes the annual pilgrimage back to the beaches of Dunkirk.






My forthcoming novel, THE EMERGENCY ZOO ,  tells a largely unknown story about the culling of hundreds of thousands of domestic pets at the outbreak of WW2. This book lead me into so much research, including reading the Mass Observation Diaries in the British Library and interviewing a dear friend who was a child at the time, that I have uncovered further untold stories. I continue to  research WW2  for the next books.

The Zoo is the first book I have written set completely in the past  and there are up to three more in the pipeline.. I rather like the idea of becoming a fully historical writer. But for me all writing is based on research and nothing can be written without knowing something of what might have come before. So History will always remain at the heart of my inspirations, my imagination and my fiction.

www.miriamhalahmy.com