The Death and modern society: Lithuanian Vėlinės (All Souls day)

ENFor the most part this article is based upon the analysis of the data collected by the author in 2000-2005 [1]. At first time the main goal of this investigation was to collect the material about the influence of the cultural globalization on to the forms of the traditional culture (for example, about the spreading of Halloween tradition in our time Lithuania). When I asked more than 600 of respondents, what they are doing in the All Souls day (or All Saints day, or the Eve of All Saints day), I got a interesting material. 1 really did not expected, that Lithuanians still are so conservative. I was shocked when many of the student age people say that tradition of the commemoration of the dead still is a very important part of their life. That in the day of All Souls in the cemeteries they are thinking about their relation with their own dead. And that they must to follow only their own tradition. And that the Halloween is not for Lithuanians. Really in the calendar year we could find only one day when almost all inhabitants of Lithuania leaves their homes and went in to the places where the roots of their families could be discovered. It is entirely unimportant what is the weather in that day, or what great distance is needed to go, but probably we did not found no one man in Lithuania (however if it is not forced by some exceptional situation - serious illness for example) who did not go to the graves of relatives and light one or more candles. The name of this day - Vėlinės, or the day ,of Dead, or the day of the All Souls in the Christian Church tradition (The next day after All Saints day). In this paper I will make an attempt to systematize ethnographical information about the All Saints and the All Sauls day customs in nowadays Lithuania and will try to analyze the posible reasons of the ritual importance of them. [p. 194].