Recently a work colleague commented on how Halloween was being taken over by intimidating teenagers, displacing the little kiddies. But as this book shows, the festival was always a period of riotous behaviour of the sort which drives David Blunkett* into furies, a period of cultural invention and jesting.
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Rogers traces the festivals travels to North America, and its twentieth century domestication and eventual commercialization, through to attempts following 9/11 to transform it back again into something resembling the Mexican Day of the Dead, a solemn commemoration of the dead. British readers will perhaps feel that the North American emphasis is rather too pronounced and little attention has been paid to festival in the UK and its transformations. Rogers also traces the influence of the Halloween series of films, and their reflection of social transformation.
Rogers probably tells you more about Halloween than you are likely to want to know, but in an accessible yet scholarly manner. Recommended.
- Peter Rogerson
* Contemporary cultural reference, meaning now lost in the mists of time
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