Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

by Nicholas Rogers

Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise. In this colorful history, Nicholas Rogers takes a lively, entertaining look at the cultural origins and development of one of the most popular holidays of the year.
Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, from classical history to Hollywood films, Rogers traces Halloween as it emerged from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end), picked up elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day), arrived in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival, and evolved into an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century. He examines the 1970s and '80s phenomena of Halloween sadism (razor blades in apples) and inner-city violence (arson in Detroit), as well as the immense influence of the horror film genre on the reinvention of Halloween as a terror-fest. Throughout his vivid account, Rogers shows how Halloween remains, at its core, a night of inversion, when social norms are turned upside down, and a temporary freedom of expression reigns supreme. He examines how this very license has prompted censure by the religious Right, occasional outrage from law enforcement officials, and appropriation by Left-leaning political groups.
Engagingly written and based on extensive research, Halloween is the definitive history of the most bewitching day of the year, illuminating the intricate history and shifting cultural forces behind this enduring trick-or-treat holiday.

Genres: History, Halloween, Nonfiction, Holiday, Horror, Folklore, Ireland

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

For the archivist and medieval historian, see Nicholas J. Rogers

Nicholas Rogers is Professor of History at York University, Toronto, Canada. He is the co-author of Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (OUP) and the author of Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (OUP), for which he received the 1999 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association for the best book on non-Canadian history.

Reviews

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a slow start and a slow end. However, the middle section describing the evolution of Halloween customs such as souling, candy, costumes, and mischief is very interesting.

[Oana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good intro to the history of Halloween, this book presented the rather surprising background of the holiday, that it was celebrated for at least two centuries along gender lines (girls spent their Halloweens playing with marriage divination tricks, boys trashing the neighbourhood). I also commend it for its Canadian content.

Some other readers found it academic and slow, which puzzles me. It is a short, easy read.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rogers covers a wide range of ideas related to the dark holiday, particularly given the book's length. It also helps that he writes well, so you breeze easily through even some of the more fact-and-figure intensive sections. Interesting, informative, and a great October read.

The book addresses the origins of Halloween, its history in Britain and North America, its similarities to Mexico's "Day of the Dead," urban legends and popular reactions to the holiday, its representation in Hollywood, current celebration trends, and some guesses about the holiday's future.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read more like a thesis paper than a book purporting to be about the history of Halloween.

[Dasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear analysis of the meanings and histories of Halloween. The first few chapters focus on the holiday's pagan and Christian rituals including Catholic rituals around All Saints' Day and it's staying power after the Protestant Reformation (largely due to the fact that events like souling and bell ringing were done outside of clerical oversight regardless). The holiday was slow to be adapted in North America where it was largely associated with Irish and Scottish immigrants until college aged students adapted it to their hazing and initiation rituals. The book delves into the "calm" Halloween traditions of the 1950s, like trick-or-treating with UNICEF boxes, followed by the 60s/70s where individuals worried about poisoned candy or the satanic elements of the holiday. Hollywood increasingly showcased the event, as Rogers demonstrates in his analysis of the Halloween movie franchise. The strongest chapter, in my opinion, is the last one on gender transgression and sexualities within the space that Halloween provides. Rogers' book is filled with interesting fun facts and a strong sustained analysis of both Canada and the United States, demonstrating the transitory and shape shifting elements of Halloween.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rogers offers a book on the history of Halloween that covers the basic territory of the early material that can be known. The problem is that early records of the festival are rare and there is only so much that might be implied. He does a good job covering it. Then, like most books on Halloween, much of the rest of the material is the description of celebrations of the holiday in various cities, with a noticeable emphasis on Canada.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with describing how people celebrate Halloween, but I've often maintained that unless someone really "gets" Halloween, writing a book on it will be somewhat less satisfactory to true fans. Rogers has an interest in how gays understand the holiday, which is reasonable enough, but I couldn't help but feel there was much more yet to be uncovered. It is a fairly short book on an ancient festival. It'll be a good source for getting some sense of the holiday, but it doesn't quite fit my image of the perfect Halloween history. It is well worth reading, in any case.

I wrote a few more remarks about it on my blog, for those interested: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.

[Jessica Ranard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was between fine & kind of good. A little simple? I think I mostly only liked it because I love Halloween so much, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to friends.

[Conan The Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me ha gustado mucho. Muy interesante y aunque mucho de lo que habla ya lo sabía, como los origines paganos del Halloween, hay también mucha información de la que no tenía ni idea.

[Friedrich Mencken · Rating 1 out of 5]

Predictable and boring would be my characterization of this all too familiar Orwellian re-writing of events. For starters the title is somewhat misleading as the book barely touches on the pagan roots of Halloween, a better title would be something more along the lines of, The social justice warriors guide to Halloween. Most of the book are commentary on old newspaper clippings with the intent of showing that the objection to the violence and mayhem of youths during Halloween are just a fantasy and that violence was just as bad in the past as it is now.

Racism, misogyny, homophobia… yeah-yeah, we have all heard it before. Any and all shortcomings of youths, whether it be an inability of having functioning governments in Africa, scholastic underachievement in Europe or rioting in Detroit on Halloween its all because of racism. If it weren’t for racism that particular group of people would be infallible it seems.

I particularly like the part on misogyny where the movies of the radical left from the 70s by the likes of John Carpenter and George A. Romero now are deemed un-PC in their portrayal of women as passive victims. Carpenter have also gotten flack for his portrayal of Asians in Big trouble in little China in later years despite his intent of doing a movie with the white lead (Kurt Russell) being a doofus who are constantly screwing up and being rescued by the Asian characters. Oh, how the tides turn.

Rogers shows the frequent inability of PC analysts of making a coherent argument when he first explains how Halloween is often used for political and social reasons in challenging "heteronormativity" and sexual norms and then proceeds to condemn protest and resistance to this as homophobia. Meaning if you object to the politics of cultural Marxism you are not only wrong you are hateful and pathological. As always, the only way of ensuring a winning hand is stacking the deck.

[Julie N · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting and informative, but I hate reading books that are supposed to be factual, scholarly-type works that contain obvious biases. If I'm looking for facts, I don't want to hear the author's opinion on various religions or political beliefs. In this case, the author frequently referred to the Evangelical Right or the Religious Right as ridiculous or ignorant, without backing up the claims. I was looking for more history and less editorializing.

The information that the book contained, however, was interesting and I learned a lot about the history of Halloween.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be a little dry for a book about Halloween. It was fun for me to read about the traditions that trick or treating evolved from, and I finally understand the Peter Paul and Mary song "A Soulin" that my parents used to sing. If you decide to read this book, I would highly recommend giving yourself permission to skim it. I think you'll enjoy it much more.

[SundaytoSaturday .com · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUMMARY: Most Christians participate or do not participate in Halloween based on their own cultural context. Some reject the holiday outright saying it is a holiday devoted to Satan while others wholly participate. Both do so without knowing the history of the holiday. In Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night Nicholas Rogers touches on various aspects of Halloween such as its historical roots, cultural influences, folklore, and societal impact.

"To examine the history of Halloween is to recognize that it is not a holiday that has been celebrated the same way over centuries, nor one whose meaning is fixed," Rogers pens.

Rogers' work overlaps significantly with Lisa Morton's Trick or Treat?, but where Morton leans towards an analytical look at the history of the holiday Rogers distinguishes himself with an additional perspective from Canada in addition to his apt social commentary. Rogers' engaging and approachable writing style makes his work more approachable for the average reader.

We have already detailed the tangled history of Halloween in our review of Morton's book, so we won't rehash the particulars. Through our reading, we have found it helpful to think of Halloween in three distinctive phases.

The first phase is tied to the ancient Celtic New Year festival known as Samhain (SOW-en). It was a time of feasting, paying debts, and marked the transition from summer to winter. The most enduring trait of Samhain lies with the feeling of Halloween rather than any particular practice. Rogers notes that "(Samhain) represented a time out of time, a brief interval 'when the normal order of the universe is suspended,' and the time is 'charged with a peculiar preternatural energy.'" Today, we would call that a spooky or otherwordly feeling.

"If Samhain imparted to Halloween a supernatural charge and an intrinsic liminality, it did not offer much in the way of actual ritual practices, save in its fire rites," Rogers writes. "Most of these developed in conjunction with the medieval holy days of All Souls' and All Saints' Day."

The second phase has to do with the Catholic church and its celebration of Hallowmas or Allhallowtide, a three-day celebration consisting of Halloween (Oct. 31), All Saints' Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls' Day (Nov. 2) to remember the dead. Many of the traditions of Halloween from the 8th and 9th centuries, such as divination with nuts and courting rituals, did not make it to our modern celebration. Today's primary influence from the second phase comes from the name, Halloween, in addition to communicating with the dead and dressing up which comes from both pagan and Catholic customs.

The third, and current, phase is the secular iteration that revolves around trick-or-treating for kids and the celebration of the macabre for adults. The staples of the third phase distinctly shift to an American commercialization of Halloween, the grotesque, and the sexy with most Halloween revelers oblivious to the first two phases which leads us to one of Rogers' salient points.

"How one celebrates Halloween, then, is very much an individual choice, and one that has given rise to considerable controversy about the limits of permissiveness, the boundaries of transgression, the propagation of sexual difference, the role Halloween plays in propagating the 'American way of life,' and the adult appropriation of what many still conceive as a children's festival of fantasy," Rogers writes.

This conclusion plays into why we think Christians can participate or not participate in Halloween. It is a holiday that has morphed and continues to morph through the years. We can choose to celebrate the good and reject the bad. Halloween: From Pagan Rituals to Party serves as an excellent starting point to learning about the holiday while offering a compelling and comprehensive exploration of Halloween through the ages.

KEY QUOTE: "To examine the history of Halloween is to recognize that it is not a holiday that has been celebrated the same way over centuries, nor one whose meaning is fixed. If it is a fixture in our annual calendar, it is also a holiday that has been reinvented in different guises over the centuries. Those reinventions can be related to the changing demographic regimes of the past; to the making of different ethnic, national, and sexual identities, to the shifting social and political anxieties of late twentieth-century America; and to the commercialization of leisure with which Halloween is now very much associated. It has always operated on the margins of mainstream commemorative practices, retaining some of the topsy-turvy features of early modern festivals--parody, transgression, catharsis, the bodily excesses of carnivalesque--and recharging them in new social and political contexts. That is part of the secret of its resilience and vibrancy."

MORE: Visit SundaytoSaturday.com where we curate topics for a disillusioned church.

[Charlie Cray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stupid me, I always thought Halloween came out of early New England harvest celebrations, what with pumpkins and apple brew and Ichabod Crain. Sure, witches go back further, but didn't the Salem witch trials happen around that time of year? And aren't mushrooms and other drugs so common on the holiday a dangerous ritualistic vestige of that hallucinatory fungus that accidentally contaminated the stored grain after an unusually humid and rainy fall...or so the eclectically entertaining raconteur and acid casualty alum assured us as we nursed our October hangovers by the keg on the porch that fall afternoon --> historians had found unusually thick tree rings dating from the same year, and so, not knowing what was in the food, the hysteria could be explained by so many being accidentally dosed...)

According to Rogers, Halloween didn't firmly plant itself in North America until the early 1800s, centuries after the first Celtic summer's-end harvest festival of Samhain or Smuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in). Some folklorists even trace the holiday as far back as the Roman feast of Pomona or the festival of the dead called Parentalia.

Various elements of Halloween have a strong association with the Celtic holiday (as well as Scottish and British versions) -- masking, role reversals, pranks and "souling" (going door to door asking for food in return for a prayer for the dead), honoring the dead at grave sites -- these all existed centuries ago. Their meanings twisted with the centuries. Catholics lit fires on the hilltops on All Saints' Night to commemorate the dead. Centuries later, dozens of fires would light up Detroit on "Devil's Night."

Syncretism -- the blending of Christian and pagan beliefs in Scotland, Ireland and England -- may have made the various rituals' and symbols transmutations easier, just as there are vestiges of Spanish and pre-Columbian symbolism and rituals in the Day of the Dead ("Dia de los Muertos").

The ancient Celts were polytheistic, so the idea that Halloween was a "satanic" holiday was probably invented by Christians. For whatever reason -- soon after Halloween established itself on the U.S. and Canadian calendars, whether for fear of pagan (Wiccan?) corruption of youth, by the early 20th Century church groups, school administrations, rotary clubs and other staid pillars of civic stability found it futile to try to ban the holiday, so they sponsored parties and dances to try to manage the rituals.

It wasn't merely the threat to evangelical mores, though. By the late 1800s, rowdyism and vandalism that accompanied Halloween had taken hold. Young men in Chicago made "soot bag attacks" on passers-by, and in Philly, "companies of youths" marched around "in the garbs of all nations," armed with bean shooters, horns and other fun-making accessories. Medical students in Ann Arbor spirited away cadavers from the anatomy laboratory. In 1900 they propped up the corpse of a headless woman against the door of University Hall. Halloween "drew its appeal from the fact that it continued to be a night of social inversion and youthful exuberance in an era when other holidays became increasingly home-centered, respectable, and institutionalized."

This was all long before we went out an egged cars and placed clothing stuffed with newspapers and strewn with ketchup next to an overturned bike just on the other side of a bend in the road where cars would screech to a halt, making the perfect stationary target for apple-throwing,

There's much more about the history of Halloween in America here (razor blades in apples, etc.) that I'll skip.

But he mentions in passing something that made me wonder if there's a potential link between Halloween and another great autumnal ritual. If you wanted to keep the teenage mayhem unleashed by Halloween from getting totally out of hand, church dances would pale by comparison to sports as a means of channeling that bloody energy: During the 16th century, "At Hallontide slaughter time" dead animals provided bladders that could be used for ball games, "inaugurating the beginning of the football season..." Hm.

[David Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chalk it up to me reading too much Shirley Jackson or Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I can't help but question traditions. It's often not enough for me to know the trappings of any given holiday. I also want to know why those trappings exist. And since Halloween has long been my favorite holiday, this book would seem to be perfect.

And it does deliver to an extent, providing some insight into what has historically been the wildest and most rebellious holiday of them all, continually walking the line between youthful disobedience and polite conformity. At times, it has been used as a site of political protest, by the gay and feminist communities, for instance, but never in a completely systematic way. Beginning in the 1950s, however, it became more standardized as well as commercialized and now largely exists for people to play out fantasies and break social norms. The book also shows how religion, changes in courtship, and attempts to tamp down bad behavior have all had an impact on the holiday.

By far the most fascinating part of the book is the first two chapters. These deal with the origins and historical changes that have happened to Halloween up through the Renaissance period. The holiday began back in the time of the Celts whose festival Samhain commemorated the end of summer and served as a liminal period between the living and the dead. Outwardly, little about the Celtic ritual resembles the Halloween of today. However, its connection to the dead and supernatural intensity were the spark for the dark underpinnings the holiday has always retained.

From there it moved on to All Saints' and All Souls' Day, which were celebrated in a variety of different ways depending on the time and location. After King James ascended the throne, the fall season in England mostly revolved around Guy Fawkes' Day, but even then there was no set date or practices for celebration. One of the most notable rituals stemming from this period was that of souling where peasants would go around collecting food or money in exchange for prayers for those in purgatory. Along with them, they would often carry carved out turnips with candles inside to represent the poor souls who needed assistance. Over time, these rituals had to be moved away from large cities as the country became less Catholic, but they persisted in one form or another and, eventually, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought them over to America.

The book has more problems after these first two chapters. While it does provide sporadic analyses, it too often gets bogged down in myriad examples. The author seemed content on several occasions to list just about every prank, act of destruction, and fire set in cities like Detroit on Halloween night rather than move on to new information. The chapter on horror movies is woefully inadequate as well. It gives a superficial analysis of a few of the movies in the Halloween series and does little to expand on the link between Halloween and the horror industry. I have to imagine most of the people who might read this book already know everything (and more) the author explains in this chapter, which makes it mostly a waste of time.

Ultimately, this book is a good starting point, but readers looking for more about ritual and tradition will need to go elsewhere.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT HISTORICAL SURVEY OF HALLOWEEN AND RELATED TRADITIONS

Nicholas Rogers is a Professor of History at New York University, and has also written books such as 'The Press Gang: Naval Impressment and its opponents in Georgian Britain Whigs' and 'Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt,' etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2002 book, "Coming to Canada in my early twenties, I was bewildered by Halloween, a North American festival about which I knew nothing. And as I learned the rituals along with my children... my wonderment increased. This book is in part an attempt to make sense of that story and to assess the holiday's wider cultural significance... Here I argue that Halloween's capacity to provide a public space for social inversion or transgression held it in good stead at a time when other potentially raucous holidays were becoming more institutionalized and domesticated." (Pg. 8-9)

He observes, "The notion that Samhain was a festival of the dead was first popularized by Sir James Frazer in the now classic 'The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'... In fact, there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists, some of whom have presumed that the feast was devoted to Saman, god of the dead." (Pg. 19)

He notes, "The Puritans of New England... detested the holiday. Increase Mather... approved of the ban on saints' days and thought any holiday suffixed -mass, whether Hallowmass or even Christmass, to be an unnecessary concession to the Antichrist." (Pg. 49) After noting that October 31st was increasingly a night for vandalism and rowdiness, he adds, "Insofar as rascality could be tolerated at all, it was better that it be rendered child-like. The logic of this argument led inexorably to the trick-or-treat." (Pg. 86) He suggests, "civic and industrial promoters hoped to eliminate its anarchic features... and restore social order to the night of 31 October." (Pg. 88)

He rebuts exaggerations about "tainted candy" being passed out (e.g., "Since only two deaths and relatively few injuries have been reported from the tampering with Halloween treats, it might be tempting to suggest that the new era of Halloween sadism was simply a product of media hype"; pg. 93). He concludes, "Halloween is currently the second most important party night in North America. In terms of its retail potential, it is second only to Christmas... Halloween can also be seen as a homogenizing force, as the epitome of North American mass culture." (Pg. 163)

This book might be criticized by some as overemphasizing some aspects of the celebration (e.g., gender-switching costumes; movies), but it is a very broad and informative historical explanation.

[Jude Walko · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy the history and social perspectives of Halloween, this is probably a must read. A very quick read and full of facts, research and anecdotes as it is written by a former professor.

One reviewer calls is the cultural standard on North American Halloween, and while that arguably could have been true when it was published, I think that is probably hardly the case now. I, myself, have read other books on the subject which go equally or perhaps even much further in depth on the subject.

All things said, though, this is a good read on the history and evolution of the Holiday. It covers everything from its Celtic origins, to Guy Fawkes Day, similarities and bleed over into Dia de Los Muertos, All Saints Day, and many others. Halloween is viewed by many in many different lights. It was used for the hazing of new students in universities, or for young people to metaphorically subjugate authority through pranks or disorderly conduct. For some it has deep religious significance honoring dead relatives or appeasing the Saints as the interim between humans and angels. For the Gay community it allows for a night, or several, of the unadulterated public celebration of their sexuality on the one night of the year when things like crossdressing or transgenderism seem to be embraced by even the most mainstream or puritanical elements of society.

Hollywood filmmakers and U.S. consumers have managed to turn frights and frolicking into dollar signs to the tune of several billions of dollars per year. Still others have used the holiday for nefarious deeds like looting, vandalizing or on occasion even rape and murder. Still others have given rise to urban legends and perpetrated stories of "razors in the apples", "cyanide in pixie sticks" and "satanic panic", albeit those things are extremely rare. Either way it is evident that Halloween has come a long way from its simple days of divination, the burning of chestnuts and the bobbing of apples which gentry often used to find out the future of potential courters.

All these things and much more are covered in this book, although by no means definitively. All in all a good read about America's second, and to some, arguably most favorite holiday of all.

[Rachel Kolar · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, engagingly-written overview of Halloween (I'm not sure why people found it dry and dull--I've read MUCH drier works on the topic). I particularly liked how even-handed it was in describing exactly how little we know about the pagan roots of the holiday. I wish it were longer, because it seems that right as Rogers starts gathering steam on a particular topic, he jumps to the next chapter (172 pages really aren't enough to get into a topic this meaty). I'm also knocking off a star because, for some inscrutable reason, Rogers devotes *ten pages* of a 172-page book to the Halloween series of movies--not just slasher flicks in general, but specifically the Halloween movies. If I'm reading a very short, general overview of Halloween, I want more about haunted houses and trick-or-treating and less of this:

"Yet Loomis consistently repudiates his own professional discourse by describing Myers as the very embodiment of evil, implacably impervious to therapeutic treated. This interpretation trades on the popular fascination with the personification of evil touted by the evangelical Right and deepened by a skepticism of rehabilitative treatment in corrective or psychiatric institutions. Indeed, more often than not, Myers is depicted as a mythic, elusive bogeyman, one of superhuman strength who cannot be killed by bullets, stab wounds, or fire . . ."

For ten pages. I think Rogers was trying to link Michael Myers to general cultural attitudes to Halloween and horror here, but it wasn't an explicit enough link and it didn't work. I know I've let it eat up even more of my review than Rogers did his book, but it annoyed me that a book that was already too short for its subject matter would waste all this space.

Still, the first four chapters about the history of Halloween are terrific, and the chapter about Halloween's gay scene ties it very interestingly to Halloween's history as a topsy-turvy carnival. It's worth a read if you just want a general overview.

[noah ✨ hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5✨?
I think I preferred the structure of this book to Lisa Morton’s history of Halloween (which frustrated me with its round-aboutness and jovial tone), which makes me want to mark it higher. I liked it because I love Halloween and I didn’t enter expecting it to tell me something I don’t already know. I think it was enjoyably detailed, even though it missed out some things, going into weird detail about one thing and then skipping the other thing completely, and it did read like a thesis paper. Which I didn’t mind, but it did have that academic paper fault where breaking sources down means you’re repeating yourself in a bunch of different ways. Either way, I enjoyed what it was! Probably not the best spooky history I’ve read though.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In October everybody is looking forward to Halloween. But what about the origins of Halloween, Samhain, the Roman feast of Pomona, the satanic ritual, the cult movies (Halloween, Wicker Man), the influences, the rites and other "doleing days" (like Guy Fawkes Night on Nov 5th in England)? You see Halloween crossing to the USA, rowdiness and vandalism, pranks (really good caricatures in the book), the struggles to a safe and sane Halloween, trick or treat, Halloween goes to Hollywood (Michael Myers) and the border crossing to Mexico. This well researched and written non-fiction book definitely sets you in the mood for halloween (also some photos inside with dressing ideas). Highly recommended!

[Robert Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halloween by Nicholas Rogers examines the origins of the holiday and discusses the god of the dead Samhain and Celtic mythology. The most fascinating chapter examined the movie Halloween by Carpenter that explained how the Holiday became associated with horror and slasher movies. During the 1970's in San Francisco, gay men would cross dress and come out during Halloween. Now that the gay community has Pride month Halloween is no longer the same and has declined in significance. According to Rogers people were putting poison in candy and razor blades in apples. It turns out this is an urban legion with little truth to it. The story of Halloween is interesting but there are sections where the reading is dry. Hallowing: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night is an interesting read.

[Amy Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book on Halloween history,but certainly not the best I've read. It's fantastic for the first few chapters and then the author begins to go off topic quite a lot. We wind up with university history,the history of Detroit as a city,gay pride, infant mortality rates and many other Not Halloween topics, causing one to skim in bored desperation for him to get back to the proper topic. I did learn some new stuff. The beginning and ending are very good. His writing style isn't boring but it isn't fun either. So it's a mixed bag really. I'd recommend Trick or Treat:A History of Halloween by Lisa Morton or Halloween Trivia by Tonya Lambert over this.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slows down a bit here and there, and interestingly also spends a fair bit of time looking at Halloween 2001 in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks -- Rogers I think does a much better job of reflecting on the changes in celebration that year than did Skal in Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, where the same type of chapter felt niche and obsolete, relevant to the early 2000s but not today. (And why is that the early 2000s was apparently time for peak Halloween historical discourse? There's 20 years of booming Halloween industry going neglected right now!)

Favorite parts came in the middle, describing the celebrations and rowdyism of yesteryear. Interesting observation: death and monsters wasn't really the thing with Halloween -- silver screen horror was slow to associate with the holiday (and vice versa).

[Dr. Chad Newton, PhD-HRD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prodessor Rogers wrote a great study of the history involved with Halloween. I discovered so many misconceptions about the rituals and origins. Between the Christian Right, the pagans, and Bible fundamentalists, I feel annoyed by the ignorance about its history. The Catholic emphasis on venerating the saints and praying for souls in purgatory lost much of its place after the Reformation started and the English Protestants created their colonies. Even some early administrators at historic universities banned any Halloween rituals as satanic or devilish.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative and short book on Halloween that reads more like an academic paper that popular reading.

It is mostly easy to follow and its short length makes it refreshingly without waffle and ultimately more accessible to most audiences.

Today it is a little dated (it focuses alot on 911) and offers little in the way of new insights more broadly, but as long as this context is accounted for, I recommend this book.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed learning all the history of this holiday and how it became what it is today. My gripes are how much time was spent on certain topics like pop culture movies and how repetitive some of the supporting points were on different topics. I felt like the author repeated himself a lot but with different phrasing so the flow of some of the chapters was sub par. But since I love history, I’m glad i read this.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book, not only learned much about Halloween that I didn't know previously but was left motivated to do even more research into the roots of this holiday's history. The illustrations and photos included did a great job in helping to provide visual historical context to the text. However, the writing did seem academically dry and I felt that some information was repeated multiple times causing the book to drag out in places.

[James Slaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent book, but the flow is very choppy and topics bounce around a fair bit, within and between chapters. Little is in here that can't be found elsewhere, where it is written more smoothly. The one exception is the emphasis on Halloween's intersection with gay culture, which would be an interesting book on its own for those more interested in that topic.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and comprehensive overview of Halloween. The inclusion of more intersectional elements was thought-provoking, along with the consideration of trick-or-treating in a post-9/11 world where parents may be more concerned about child safety.

[Jamie Zaccaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clever timeline of the history of Halloween.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful, concise read with very interesting historical facts about one of my favourite holidays.