The Roman liturgical calendar identifies the first day of November as the Solemnity of All Saints' Day, a festival of precept, followed the next day by the Commemoration of the Dead. But, alongside the rites and celebrations sanctioned by the official religion, there exists at the level of popular religion, even in Sardinia, a fascinating universe of symbols and practices that has its roots in the fundamental contrast between death and life. In the protected time of the festival, the disturbing aspect of death is managed and controlled thanks to the mediation of culture, which with its rituals allows an ideal 'return' of the dead to the space of the living. To this end, traditions such as the one, well attested on the Island (and still vital in the most conservative areas) respond especially on the night between the 1st and the 2nd day of November, of leaving the table set for the souls of their extinct loved ones, who, it was believed, would return to their homes at midnight, to find comfort in the scent (immaterial like the spirit) of the foods loved in

Another way of realizing, especially through the materiality of food, the reunion between the dead and the living, were the offerings, primarily food (bread, sweets, dried fruit) to figures considered in folkloric thought as ambassadors of the dead. First of all, these are children, who, because of a cyclical conception of life, are considered entities closer to their ancestors, if not their promanation, as demonstrated by the custom of torrare a lùmene sos mannos ('giving children the name of their fathers'). In addition, children, because of their temporal proximity at the time of birth, an indistinct area in which the crossroads between death and life are confused, are considered the best mediators with the dead. Just like the latter, since they do not have material assets, they are classified as outsiders of society. For the same reason, the poor also act, at the traditional level, as vicars (i.e. ambassadors) of the dead. Even the gravediggers, the guardians of the cemetery, due to their physical proximity to the dead, and the bell ringers, the altar boys and the sacristans, operators of the sacred, and therefore mediators between life and the afterlife, participate

The vicarious figures of the dead mentioned so far, especially children, are the protagonists of these rituals that are variously named on the Island, depending on the country of reference: su mortu mortu, su bene 'e sas ànimas, is animeddas. Some denominations allude to the subject of the question already in the name that identifies them: e.g. on bread and binu (bread and wine), on peticocone (from the verb pètere 'ask' + the name of bread: su cocone), on bread 'e su tocu (with reference to the knock of the door with which, in every home, the questioners announce their visit), etc. The names of the type su prugadòriu and sim., on the other hand, refer to the superposition of the meanings on an older nucleus related to the suffrage ideology proper to the official religion. In this case, the donations to the questioners represent a sort of pence in suffrage of deceased loved ones, in order to shorten their purgatory sentences

To understand, however, the deeper meaning of the offers given to the questioning, it will be necessary to remember that in the oldest religious groups of agrarian origin (which also affect Sardinia, whose main pillars of the traditional economy consist of agriculture and herding) the dead were considered able to positively influence the growth of cultivated plants, especially wheat. This power derived from them from the fact that they shared the belly of the earth with the seeds of cultivated plants, so much so that in the Campidanese variant of dying it is said that I went to biri is trigus ('going to see the wheat', scil. the seeds). Getting the 'help' of the dead with food offers was equivalent to guaranteeing the success of the agrarian year. The time when these autumn polls take place (from October 31 to November 2) coincides with the planting operations, not only the initial phase of the agricultural cycle, but also the moment when the seeds are in the womb of the earth, the domain of the

It is important to highlight another symbology as well. Traditionally, in addition to bread, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, raisins were also given to the questionants; dried fruit all comparable to seeds and also present in the typical desserts of this period, papassinus/-os and pan' 'e saba/sapa,

The seed, in peasant folkloric thought, is considered part of a life path (life, death, life) that is renewed cyclically. By eating seeds, life in power, we participate in this path of cyclical regeneration, taking away from death the definitive word on life

In Sardinia, these autumnal rituals have remained vital in the most conservative centers. In some places, however, they have been subjected to dynamics of 'rediscovering tradition' with modern forms of contamination with 'Trick or Treat? ” with an Anglo-Saxon flavor