Halloween History
As an imaginative, dreamy kind of kid growing up, Halloween had a special place in my heart for about as long as I can remember. Perhaps it was from being placed inside a carved pumpkin by my parents before I was three months old or maybe because my grandmother believed we were related to Robert Burns who did so much to codify the Scottish traditions that influenced the modern celebration of Halloween, but as the Minnesota weather turned crisp and the leaves of the oaks, maples and basswoods surrounding our house began turning vibrant shades of orange, yellow, and red, I felt an air of the mysterious, magical, and spooky in my everyday life. Even if I was, in general, a squeamish and easily disturbed child, unable to so much as linger in the horror section of the video store, I was captivated by this special day celebrating “playing pretend,” and of course being encouraged to play with identity and roam the neighborhood after dark collecting candy appealed to me as well. From sketching my interpretations of haunted houses, reports of spine tingling readings of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or Grandpa’s Ghost Stories, or gross ingredient filled creepy potion recipes, going through my old school papers reveals primary sources in a personal expression of a particular expression of North American folklife.
At this point, the day has become steeped in nostalgia for me, with memories of carving pumpkins, the smell of my hand-woven trick-or-treat bag, planning costumes, and digging up Halloween decorations from the basement. Even throughout my adulthood, I have attempted to maintain the spirit of the holiday by consuming scary media, taking ghost tours, and attending costume parties and, as I look forward to celebrating the holiday with my child in the years to come, it remains a personal highlight of the year for me. In a world that’s already scary enough, having the space to engage with frightening and macabre themes on your own terms seems like an important custom.
Throughout my memories and my years of observing the holiday, though, many questions remain. Why did my parents and many throughout our region, home, after all, to the Halloween Capital of the World, devote so much energy to creating this special experience for their children? How did these secular rites develop, with all of their signifiers and emblems? As the years have gone by, do children today seem to be celebrating it differently, or is that merely the nostalgia tinted eyes of adulthood? As Halloween becomes a commercial juggernaut, has the center of the holiday shifted to adults in general? Over the years, I’ve read a few works of popular nonfiction exploring the development of contemporary Halloween customs, but it is surprising how few works delve deeply into the history of what has become such a prominent part of US culture. It has just become an accepted part of the fabric of the year, taken for granted.
According to Lisa Morton, author of the comprehensive 2011 reference works The Halloween Encyclopedia and Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, the holiday remains an understudied part of folklore, and the most misunderstood holiday. This year, I read her work Trick or Treat along with a few other nonfiction books discussing the historical and cultural dimensions of Halloween from various facets, from media to the places most associated with the holiday.
Morton’s concise but detailed account of the evolution of Halloween customs debunks some common myths and provides interesting context on how, from a mixed origin of pagan and Christian roots in the British Isles, this macabre but fun-loving festival took off in nineteenth-century North America before being exported to the rest of the world as a commercial product by the twenty-first even as it had faded in its homeland. Organized in a loose chronology charting the history of the 31st of October from its beginnings to its spread throughout the world, Trick or Treat provides fascinating insight into how various cultural artifacts have merged and shifted throughout time to form what we currently recognize as the celebration of the holiday. Along the way, Morton discusses the origins of some of the common motifs associated with Halloween, from black cats to jack-o’ lanterns, to bobbing for apples, including parallels with other festivals of the dead, like the Latin American Dia de los Muertos.
In a lot of ways, Trick or Treat feels like a condensed version of Morton’s Halloween Encyclopedia, presenting a wealth of information but feeling in the end a bit repetitive, often returning to certain ideas, particularly in the conclusion, an examination of depictions of Halloween in popular culture. Since, as Morton writes, Halloween has been ephemeral in how it was celebrated, its history is primarily illustrated through the arts, she summarizes some prominent pieces of literature, film, and art that shaped public perception of Halloween in order to answer the question of what Halloween really represents. However, this examination mostly serves as a list of Halloween themed media with little analysis as to why or how these depictions appeared or what made them particularly influential. All in all, it’s a wonderful resource for Halloween lore, but I think there is a lot of room for further research on the topic.
From David J. Skal, author of the interesting 2001 Halloween analysis Death Makes a Holiday, Fright Favorites is a glossy and colorful list of 31 pieces of horror cinema from a century of film history he prepared for Turner Classic Movies. Echoing Morton’s discussion of how popular culture influenced the celebration of Halloween through the twentieth century, Skal’s summaries and commentary on these classic horror movies from 1922’s Nosferatu to 2017’s Get Out illustrate the influence Hollywood had on Halloween celebrations in the US. Providing in depth facts about the productions of these seminal works, as well as companion films that might appeal to fans of each work, Fright Favorites offers fun facts on film horror history.
Among the movies discussed in Fright Favorites is the 1993 Disney film Hocus Pocus, which seems to be a bit of an anomaly in the Disney film catalog but seems to be approaching cult movie status. While I wasn’t a huge fan of the film, I enjoyed it whenever it came on and it is undeniable that it really captures the nostalgic essence of Halloween for me in hindsight, and I’m far from alone.
In Disney superfan Aaron Wallace’s 2016 book Hocus Pocus in Focus: The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Disney’s Halloween Classic is a quick and breezy read stuffed with movie trivia, as well as some interesting, if superficial, analyses. For the most part in his “ultimate unofficial fan guide” Wallace gives a deep dive into the movies’ development, casting, score, and legacy, following the tenet that it “is a fine and worthy film and it ought to be enjoyed just as richly as any other,” which I think he makes a thorough case for.
While proposing some thought provoking essays on the Speilbergian influence on the film, whether it could count as a horror movie, and its feminist and sexual politics, though, little of the analysis goes much deeper than an average YouTube reviewer. Including a lengthy bonus material section, all in all, I feel, Hocus Pocus in Focus offers pretty much anything a fan of the movie might want to know, including an extensive bibliography and index, always a good touch.
Of course, Wallace also includes a lengthy epilogue speculating on the chances of a sequel which, with Hocus Pocus 2 now hitting Disney+ six years later, perhaps has gone a bit differently than could have been predicted. While I haven’t seen the sequel yet, I’m certainly looking forward to it.
Among the topics Wallace brings up in Hocus Pocus in Focus was the film’s setting of Salem, Massachusetts, aka Witch City, the location of one of the United State’s most striking and symbolic tragedies, the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. I feel that the movie sparked my interest in the historic city even before I started getting into Lovecraftian fiction, and it’s always been on my list of places I’d like to visit.
Writer J.W. Ocker’s book A Season With the Witch shows that I am hardly alone in this. Describing the month he and his family spend living in Salem, October 2015, hoping to experience everything the spooky New England city’s fabled Halloween festivities have to offer. With the annual Haunted Happenings events transforming the historic port town into a creepy wonderland for the entire month, Ocker explores the local color of Salem from a variety of topics, from its infamous witch trial history to its maritime heritage and its central place in American literary canon as the hometown of Nathaniel Hawthorne, but especially the quirky folks who call the town home and thrive off of the tourism of ghost tours, witch jails, and haunted houses. Interviewing a variety of locals, Ocker highlights the ambiguity of a community relying heavily on appealing to people’s desire for macabre and frightening experiences while balancing the horrible reality of the trials, the victims of Puritan paranoia and rigidity.
Ocker writes in a very conversational style, though, which on occasion began to grate on me a bit and the various meandering chapters discussing these separate but interconnected elements of the Salem experience begins to drag a bit as things become a little repetitive. All in all, I feel his account is a bit superficial, but could certainly spark inspiration for delving deeper into any one of the topics he broaches. It definitely would be a useful, if a bit packed, resource for visiting the city.
Closer to home, we have Anoka, the self proclaimed Halloween capital of the world, and the second most popular Halloween destination according to USA Today, beating out even Salem. Boasting the first civic Halloween celebrations in the US, beginning 1920, Anoka, a Twin Cities suburb a bit north of Minneapolis, proved influential on modern celebrations of the holiday.
Unfortunately, Roxy Orcutt’s slim 2015 volume History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital does not offer much information on this fascinating history. Orcutt’s focus on both the history and the hauntings of the town offer good promise to delve into some legends and folklore of the region, but never more than scratches the surface. While organized in a rough chronological order, from the nineteenth century to the present, the layout is very disjointed and disorganized, hopping from one topic to the next with little context. All in all, the work is a rambling, rather shallow account of the history of Anoka and its local ghost stories, with little detail provided aside from basic facts and a few anecdotes, with little insight into the actual history of the festivities.
In conclusion, while a lot of these works delve into some pretty interesting history of this beloved but ephemeral day of the year, I feel that they are only a beginning and that there is a lot more to discover and learn about the origins and evolution of Halloween, both how it was created and why it continues to capture the imaginations of children and adults alike. Speaking of children, better start getting our candy in order for the trick or treaters who will no doubt shortly be stopping by, even on a chilly Monday evening.