Santino, Jack, ed. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press,
1994 (reprint, , 2000). 280 pp. $18.95 (USD). ISBN: 0-87049-813-4.
[1] The mystique of the most occult-oriented event of the North American
calendar draws people‹scholars and lay-people alike‹to Santino's ground-breaking
collection of essays loosely organized around the topic of Halloween,
as does the style and presentation of this particular text, which
covers a broad spectrum.
[2] Santino opens the discussion with a very personal, almost chatty,
introduction. He describes how his interest in the topic grew, leading
to his formal study of Halloween customs in the 1970s. He whimsically
puzzles over the fact that Halloween has grown into one of the most
celebrated holidays on the calendar, and yet there remains no vacation
day for it. He mentions various facets of the holiday, including its
representation of the juxtaposition of life and death through the
symbols of harvest and winter. Halloween also can be seen as a rite
of passage as people age, and is seen in widely differing lights by
different groups from Wiccans to the Christian Right. In all, Santino
explains that the diversity of approaches in his text should be read
as an indication of the richness of the subject and thus the book
can be seen as a preliminary step in the formal study of this popular
holiday.
[3] The text is divided into three sections ("Customs,"
"Communities," and "Material Culture"), although
these do not form rigid boundaries and seem to add nothing to the
volume. Santino himself acknowledges that there is a fair amount of
cross-over between some essays and the rather arbitrary headings.
In the lead-off essay ("Harvest, Halloween, and Hogmanay: Acculturation
in Some Calendar Customs of the Ulster Scots")‹particularly dry
after Santino's lively introduction‹Philip Robinson compares Halloween
to other yearly events, arguing that all of the events complete the
symbolic cycle of life and death. Bill Ellis ("¥Safe' Spooks:
New Halloween Traditions in Response to Sadism Legends") examines
the way Halloween has evolved in light of "Sadistic treat"
legends‹such as the razor-in-the-apple myth, and the Satan scare of
the 1980s‹and argues that the increasingly stringent security measures
enforced for "safe" trick-or-treating represent adults wresting
control from children in a degradation of the role-reversal so integral
to the symbolism of the holiday. Based on a series of interviews,
Steve Siporin ("Halloween Pranks: ¥Just a Little Inconvenience'")
describes the difference between urban and rural celebrations of Halloween,
with the former emphasising tick-or-treating and the latter centred
on "pranking," and concludes that the pranks are a remnant
of an archetypal need to warn farmers of the upcoming winter. The
last article in the first section (Tad Teluja's "'Trick or Treat'
Pre-Texts and Contexts") examines the historical roots of Halloween
and its evolution into the North American holiday of trick-or-treating,
and concludes (like Ellis) that the Halloween tradition has evolved
from a religious festival into a part of the modern corporate machine,
reflecting the society within which it grows.
[4] The second section of the book ("Community") continues
the theme of the modern corporate takeover of what was once a holiday
ruled by children, indicating the pointlessness of the headings. Russell
Belk ("Carnival, Control, and Corporate Culture in Contemporary
Halloween Celebrations") describes the evolving removal of all
"carnivalesque" elements of Halloween in an attempt to control
and subdue potential rowdy elements; for example, companies harness
the mystique of Halloween to encourage employee loyalty. In an interesting
ethnographic study that may be of limited general application, Michael
Taft ("Adult Halloween Celebrations on the Canadian Prairies")
addresses "mumming" practices of some rural Canadians in
Saskatchewan, noting that Canadian prairie farmers do not associate
Halloween with the end of harvest in the way that American farmers
might (since the harvest ends much earlier in Canada then it does
further south). In an ethnographic study conducted over a number of
years, Jack Kugelmas ("Wishes Can Come True: Designing the Greenwich
Village Halloween Parade") reports on the bawdy parades and "promenades"
of Greenwich village in which the emphasis has less to do with religious
enchantment and more to do with the license they provide (and as is
found in other carnival-type settings).
[5] The final two articles make up the third and final section of
the book ("Material Culture"). The first by Carl Holmberg
(whimsically titled "Things That Go Snap-Rattle-Clang-Toot-Crank
in the Night") begins glibly with an anecdote from childhood
but becomes more professional when analysing the importance of Halloween
noise-makers (popular in the 1950s but virtually nonexistent now),
concluding that children used noise-makers as a power tool in the
adult-child inversion typical of the season but overlooking the next
step (reached by others in this collection) that the lack of such
noise-makers today may be a symptom of the seizure of control by adults.
The final article (Grey Gundaker's, "Halloween Imagery in Two
Southern Settings"), drawing on observations from two disparate
situations (the use of Halloween decorations at children's grave sites,
and as year-long warning signs on the houses of certain African-Americans),
concludes that both uses create a space where the living and the dead
can coexist through the symbols of Halloween, ending the collection
nicely by forcing readers to think about the impact of Halloween images
at a very emotional level.
[6] Because the volume includes more than discussions of Halloween,
there are a few articles that don't seem to fit well. Catherine Schwoeffermann's
contribution ("Bonfire Night in Brigus, Newfoundland"),
which only tangentially relates to Halloween in that Bonfire Night
can be linked to Guy Fawkes' Day‹which can in turn be linked back
to Halloween‹is an ethnographic study of the kind of role-inversion
that takes place during this season as, in this case, adolescents
take charge of constructing huge community bonfires. In another essay
not directly related to Halloween‹and one that is overwhelming in
detail but not especially interesting‹Kay Turner and Pat Jasper ("Day
of the Dead: The Tex-Mex Tradition") describe the differences
between the Mexican and Texan variations of this observance. The article
by A. W. Salder ("The Seasonal Context of Halloween: Vermont's
Unwritten Law") fails to establish its point clearly; while it
seems to argue that Vermont farmers attach a different significance
to Halloween than do people elsewhere, it focuses instead on the fact
that hunting season begins just after Halloween, establishing a connection
with death in that context rather than one assumed to exist with Halloween.
[7] In all, this book provides the reader with a wide array of ideas
and approaches to the study of a very popular North American tradition
which has its roots in those of other cultures and times. Halloween
traditions continue to evolve and change, though the meaning behind
the tradition seems to be a constant one of inversion and upheaval.
The essays, while of varying degrees of usefulness, can be of interest
to scholars in a numbers of different fields, including religion,
anthropology, folklore, sociology, and popular culture, and is certainly
a very useful resource for anyone interested in pursuing a study of
Halloween specifically, especially as a foundation for further research.
Despite the failings of some articles within this collection, and
a minor criticism of the way in which they were laid out, Santino's
Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life remains an
important work almost a decade after its first publication.
Christopher Moreman
University of Wales, Lampeter
c_moreman@hotmail.com
