Hidden in the Baztan Valley near the southwestern French border and a few miles away from the pristine shores of the Bay of Biscay, sits a little village with a big secret. Removed from the bustle of the Basque Country’s San Sebastian and the glitz of Biarritz, Zugarramurdi is a tranquil town where not too much has happened in the last four hundred years.

This lush area of Navarra is an ideal blend of French, Spanish and Basque culture, and this mix is especially evident in the local architecture. Painted clean white and adorned with red wooden shutters, bountiful flowerpots filled with pansies and geraniums spill from all the windows along Zugarramurdi’s streets.  As I…

Americans mark autumn with two major holidays: Thanksgiving in late November, and Halloween on Oct. 31. The latter is a personal favorite: Ever since I watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! as a child, Halloween has been one of my anchor points for the fall season. Halloween as we know it, with trick-or-treating and funny costumes, is for all intents and purposes a strictly Western practice. Though it has in recent years spread to South America, the Far East, and Eastern Europe, some of these places have their own traditions which resemble our own Halloween…

Take for example our southern neighbor, Mexico, where Halloween is just the precursor to the two-day celebration of Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Halloween itself is celebrated very similarly to how we celebrate here in the U.S.…