Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History "inaugurated contemporary Halloween popular histories and paved the way for the numerous Halloween histories published since."* (p. 158)

Unfortunately for Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History it was last on my list of reading on the origins and history of Halloween. By the time I'd come to Bannatyne's Halloween, published in 1990, I'd already read the more recent Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween and The Halloween Encyclopedia by Lisa Morton.

Both of Morton's books presented the latest findings on Halloween's history which contradicted Bannatyne's research from 20 years prior in Halloween; for example, that of Samhain as a "Lord of Death." Overlooking the historical inaccuracies, Halloween still offered a unique perspective on the evolution of the American Halloween in its presentation of personal narratives and accounts from geographical locales and/or specific time periods.

Recommended to those who want a tightly focused, historical walk-through of Halloween in America from a sociological standpoint.

3 stars

*Morton, Lisa. The Halloween Encyclopedia,2nd ed., Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., 2011. ( )

I'm not gonna lie, when I first picked up this book I was a little skeptical . I'd read "The Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury, I knew all their was to know about the history of Halloween, how could their possibly be any more to the story? Well, that's where I was wrong. Author, Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, painstaking researches the origins of traditions, feast days, and folk lore going all the way back to the Celts, Druids, and Romans. Even though the title of this book boasts the "American History," Bannatyne does her research and takes the reader all the way back to Europe to get a glimpse of the first origins. She then talks about how it was meshed with other cultures and religions (the Roman Empire, Christianity, etc.) through the centuries and how it finally was celebrated on October 31 (November 1 is All Saint's Day or Hallow's Day, so October 31 is Hallows Eve). Once it was joined with Scottish and Irish traditions, it started to more closely resemble the holiday we celebrate now: costumes to blend in with the dead, begging for food door to door, carrying turnip lanterns (pumpkins were a new favorite when they came to America), and playing pranks or tricks on one another (picked up from Guy Fawkes Day). Once the immigrants brought their traditions to the United States, things escalated and by the late nineteenth century, ladies magazines were producing articles on how to throw the best Halloween parties. When the Halloween tradition came to America, it lost a lot of the "communion with the dead" aspects. The Victorian age simply turned it into another reason to party.

Overall, it was a fascinating read. I learned soo much about one of my favorite holidays and I definitely appreciate it even more, knowing the rich history behind the traditions. A must read for any fan of Halloween or things that go bump in the night. It's filled with great poetry, pictures, and drawings to go along with the history. I do wish there had been more about the Day of the Dead and the evolution of costumes (how did they get so slutty?!), but hey, this book is 25 years old, I understand :) ( )

This non-fiction covers the origins of the holiday, from the bits of Irish, English, Scottish, German and African cultures that mixed together to give us a day of witches, jack o' lanterns, trick or treating and pranks. The research is comprehensive but the writing can be downright dry in some areas and the arrangement, though linear and easy to follow, is strangely done. Amateurish, I guess, as essays are routinely cut off by a page of poetry and many of the photos do little to showcase the subject matter. Still, a decent choice for those interested in the facts. ( )

Ah Halloween how we love you so. If you're interested in the background of Halloween this is a great and concise start. Though not as thorough as it potentially could have been it makes for a fun and fascinating read. I do wish Bannatyne would have touched a bit more on the modernization of Halloween and even provided an update; that would have been nice. ( )

This is purported to be a history of Halloween from its roots in the old world to "modern" America (the book's original printing is 1990; the actual dates referred to in it don't go past 1987--as such an update could stand to happen). In this it more or less succeeds, with some reservations.

The structure is generally one in which individual chapters could be read in their entirety without consulting the rest of the work. This means that there's a massive amount of repetition of the main themes (sometimes, I think, nearly verbatim) as each chapter recapitulates its own material, or introduces a new chapter with a summary of the previous ones. This becomes pretty tiresome if one's reading the entirety of the work.

Some of her details are a bit suspect; she cites occasionally, but in no way systematically (and please do get rid of end-notes; foot-notes are much more accessible), and from pretty wildly diverse sources (anything from ladies' magazines to local newspapers--what exactly was her methodology? Perhaps something could be said about this in the introduction, or the book could be subdivided by resources...). Sometimes she just gets things plain wrong--there was no Celtic god "Baal" for example--and I suspect this comes from relying upon outdated scholarship. A quick glance at her bibliography reveals that many of her sources were 19th century popular histories like this one instead of first-hand primary sources (which she uses a bit more for modern stuff).

All in all, it's a fair read, but it's by no means the end-word on the subject. It raises a number of interesting questions, like:
1) Can we see some statistics of "popular" Halloween costumes in the last 30 years, and perhaps some analysis of the trends? This would be an excellent book (or chapter, at the very least);
2) What about commercialization and the "modern" Halloween?
3) Some kind of systematic examination of newspapers from major and minor markets with regard to local Halloween customs might yield VERY interesting results, instead of the scattershot, random version of this she gives us; take us through and do a little statistical analaysis, perhaps even look at diffusion of cultural ideas?

I'd recommend it, I suppose, but I'm still looking for a better one. ( )