Today is St Martin’s Day, and they’ve put up the Christmas lights along our street. Now, when you glance out the window into the dark, you see a row of lights.
In Germany, every year for St Martin’s Day, children make paper lanterns at school. Then, at dusk, they carry them through the streets in procession. The lights down on our street look like a procession too: a row of candles lighting up the night in the month of the dead.
We are living the period when afternoon suddenly goes dark and the evening grows long. We enter the realm of shadows and people all over the world once lit fires and bonfires along the way.
In the Italian countryside St Martin’s Day used to be a moment of choice: contracts were renewed or not, and arrangements had to be made for the coming season. That’s why the expression “fare San Martino” in Italian language still means to move house. The sharecroppers of the Po Valley would load everything onto their carts, to set off for a new farm. Meanwhile, the barrels were opened and the wine was tasted. Soups simmered on the stove and chestnuts roasted in the embers. Time to say goodbye, sometimes.
St Martin’s Day. An end and a beginning. Shadow and light.
Amid piles of leaves and a sun that, for a moment, lights up the darkest clouds.
