Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
by Nicholas Rogers
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nicholas RogersEdition: Paperback
Published: 2003-10-31
ISBN: 0195168968
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Book Review: An excellent history of Halloween.
Summary: 5 Stars
As other reviews suggest, this is not a ghost story or for those with short attention spans. Dr. Rogers is a professor of history, and he has produced a correspondingly scholarly book of history, including names, dates, argumentation, and references to his source materials. When I found the book, I was mainly interested in the early history of Halloween, and the first part of the book delivers it. And it's an important contribution, contrasting with pop-histories that paste later Christian traditions on to early Celtic celebrations, and basically dismiss a thousand years of Christian development as something like "And then they tried to Christianize it because those darned pagans wouldn't go away". Halloween evolved as the cultures celebrating it evolved, and you can't understand its celebration today through a single slice of time in history.
I was tempted to give it four stars instead of five because I thought the author put too much space into Halloween movies, and not enough into the early American development. But he was bringing us up through its modern celebration in the US and Canada, and movies are an important source and reflection of the culture, so I suppose that serves his intent.
You shouldn't try to learn any subject from a single book. Excellent companion books are "The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween" by Markale, for its early history, and "Halloween: An American Holiday, An American Tradition" by Bannatyne for its American development, if you ignore her pre-American history of it (for reasons which are explained comprehensively in Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon").
Summary of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
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.
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