the mind is a city like London,
smoky and populous: it is a capital
like Rome, ruined and eternal.
-- Delmore Schwartz

past the ledges of the orchards and the vines the car slopes up through the quiet naked woods, downy oaks robinia and salix (especially robinia) (still the bright beige leaves of the oaks hang from the ascending branches obstinately) standing above the underwood of brambles and hazels with joyously unrolled yellow male flowers, at first the shattered gravel road whose bends seem to disappear out of the slant and into the trees, then fading into concrete, sudden civilization of garages and magnolia trees across montevecchia alta hills down, to the inevitable lowlands, the consistent street lights, the wide round abouts, the trucks one after the other, the honks, the cedars, bar tabacchi, farmacia, casalinghi, the incongruous architectures of Brianza, the blue and white and brown signs of towns and cities to reach, the giant malls offshore into the parking lots, and going rolling and hanging into the traffic, rapidly squeezed into highway east and very fast, passing many cars, going south, the low enraged sun blazing white hot on the concrete and into the eyes, hazardous moving from lane to lane to the exit few miles ahead and finally at the streetlight of viale forlanini, in front of me the low canyons of the city, sky fading to white, rumble of the restless souls, people rushing down the sidewalks, in and out of the many shops, gatherings of more waiting for the tram 12, haze of gases and dust all and above, mothers crossing the streets with probably folded up babies in strollers, VIP cars pushing into the reserved lane, white trunks of the plane trees going up and in the sun, I look for a parking spot, hot in the face, lowered windows, in my green gardener suit and the whole car dung-smelling dust crackling, today I stole from work batches of preserves and jams now scattered on the passenger seat, I am coming back from the absurd organic farm up in the hills where I work this week again. I find the parking spot. From the warm valley where the only sounds are chirping of birds and far away hammering in the orchards I am here bumping the car up above the curb and civilization is everywhere and immediately completely all around and rightfully irreversible and ¿just how absurdly it is to forget all about it for a underpaid brief day of hard-working dung-shoveling illusions?
Moh'. Who cares? For the failures? I drove a 1978 Lamborghini tractor with a trailer today up and down those ledges and thought I would overturn it any moment, and hated it. I can walk home with a fair walk and joyful.

--In picture, above: the aforementioned tractor. Music: "because of this", mark lanegan

I usually don't waste my energies by opposing to any changing force that may modify traditions, languages, habits, recurrences, creeds, ethnicity in my country or in any other country.
It's not that I don't care for tradition, in fact I can be quite affected by its corruption on a personal level. It's just that mankind attended the burial of its own traditions a zillion times already: shouldn't we have by then learned that tradition is the illusion of permanence, not permanence itself?
There is no possible reason to get hysterical if our traditions are overtaken, whether a local dialect or a convention is swallowed by a stronger idiom or rite, a cuisine delicacy is replaced by some barbarian branded food. (I am lying: I amterrified by the losses so much I am becoming a conservative).

That said, I haven't the faintest idea why on earth Italy should be attracted by Halloween.
First of all, the pumpkin is not an important presence on the Italian table.
Second, we traditionally celebrate the day of the dead on the second of November, by going to visit our dead relatives at the cemetery. In the early morning of that same day the dead come back to visit their former houses. Why bothering to exorcise any fear of death two nights before?
Third, and most important, there is not a big neighborliness tradition in Italy, at least not everywhere. Attitudes and dispositions strongly change from region to region, from town to town.
For some, who are friendly and intrusive beyond any reasonable measure, the situation is so much amicable and interfering during the whole year that they have no need to emphasize their good neighborly relationships by going to ask for candies on a certain day of the year. For many others though, it's not a good idea to go banging at night on someone's door anytime, especially if cheerfully. They tend to be wary, defensive, uninterested even if respectful of the neighbors. Or just, as it mostly is in the northern Italian culture, sober in their manifestations of cheerfulness.

Near Ivrea, a town between Turin and Milan, two fourteen years old were badly wounded tonight because an old man, that they were trick-or-tricking, shot four blows against them with his hunting rifle. As it seems, he was a frequent victim of jokes and vexations by the local kids. The unlucky wounded teenagers were in fact part of a small gang of kids that threw onto his frontyard some noisy firecrackers just right before going in and knocking on his door.

This sad story gives us two more hints on why Halloween should not be popularized in Italy:
First, going door-by-door may instinctively, seriously be mistaken by the kids for a mafioso behavior, potentially turning the whole thing into something annoying when not actually threatening.
Second (and folks, even this is NOT meant as paradoxical) there's a good chance that in this country Halloween may turn out not as a celebration, since we don't have anything to celebrate on October 31^st, but as a dreadful game.
Hopefully not, but possibly, like this one.

so the imperfect slaves that too often did the dishes,
  granted the point,
defectively tried to be different to portray you,
as you think of yourself walking around in underware,
  being egoist

the fact that no bird is calling in the morning
  before the downpour,
the impression of the builtland all around sleeping,
every animate creature in it sleeping

under the furniture giveaway acid yellow poster bill,
the phenomenal FIAT blue car they want me to buy
  in front of italian bars where sugar bags advertise
ROMAN horse gambling

the first buongiorno of the day as you walk past,
  feeling observed,
and walking as you let your fingertips bounce
over the poles of the gardens gates

bending where everything lays motionless and lights are
only sloughing colors behind the boughs ajar,
you the illusion of a segment of inexact time

so avoid it, so make it last

the moment where you grasp something of the world,
landscape in the concrete valley
necessity to die the sooner the better

you won't believe it but
as she does with millions of lives all around, life
can stand you