Dolcetti Scherzetti in Frascati

That is the Italian translation of "trick or treat". Yesterday October 31 I had an amazing experience. As usual we had a halloween party. However Kathy (age 9) thought it ended too soon and saw kids in costumes walking around Frascati (just South of Rome)so she insisted that we go out to trick or treat.

She rang a door bell and said "Dolcetti Scherzetti" to my utter amazement a window opened and a nice couple of people tossed candy down. Halloween has spread to Italy. Now I had noticed that little stores have been selling Halloween junk for the past few years, but selling and giving are rather different activities.

We continued to walk around. She was dressed as a pumpkin, I occasionally wore a rubber jackolantern face mask (occasionally because there were no nose holes). I was a bit shy about attempting to introduce the concept of trick or treat to unsuspecting households in Italy, so we joined a group of girls age slightly more than Kathy who were supervised by two very young looking women who must have been a generation older but struck me as big sisters with very nice hair (and who might read this).

They were ringing door bells and almost consistently getting candy. In fact, sad to say, the bells belonged to relatives of the girls and I suspect that there was some advanced planning. The indirect approach of tossing candy down from a 3rd floor window was widely used leading to a rush to collect it.

A further amazingly wonderful thing is that the girls whose group we joined insisted on sharing their candy with Kathy. First house the candy was all in a bag lowered in a basket on a string. They offered it to Kathy who took one piece. They insisted she take more.

Kathy concluded that it was the best Halloween of her life.


Giampiero M. Gallo has left a new comment on your post "11/01/2006 08:26:00 AM":

Well, after a while, we tracked you down (not a hard feat). We were thinking of you guys the other day and wondering how old Kathy may be. As per Halloween, there is an American friend of ours who buys candies (or rather imports those fluorescent radioactive Halloween candies from the US) and distributes them among her neighbors. Our kids go around and visit these enlisted neighbors to collect them. A good tradition - one neighbor even attempted a 'scherzetto'.
All the best. A very entertaining blog.