Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween by David J. Skal

Halloween makes many people nervous. Some Christians dislike it for its Pagan roots, others feel it glorifies Satan and the forces of Darkness, while some people just remember the "Poisoned Candy" scares of the 1970's. But many people simply think of Halloween as a kid's Holiday, one where they get dressed up and get escorted from house to house, trolling for candy. And some think of it as nothing more than that.

But why does America celebrate Halloween, and where did the celebration come from? In truth, not only America celebrates a holiday like Halloween. In Mexico, they Celebrate "La Dia de las Muertos", or "The Day of the Dead", where families remember their beloved dead, and go to the cemetery to clean up graves, construct an Offrenda, or altar, which they fill with flowers and things that their loved ones enjoyed to entice them back. On the last day, they actually eat a meal at the cemetery with their ancestors, after which they let them return to the land of the dead for another year- and although Mexico is Christian, this celebration mingles Native Central American traditions with those to make a holiday uniquely there own, complete with plenty of Sugar skulls to be eaten and art showing skeletons enjoying all sorts of things they did in life.

Author David J. Skal crosses the nation to tease out stories and truth behind America's holiday most situated around death. He plumbs the real story behind the "Poisoned Candy" myth, which only occurred once and was the story of a father who poisoned his own son, not some neighbor bent on murdering an innocent child- and the motive was profit. He explores the European Pagan traditions that led to Halloween, and the purely American traditions which followed it.

But for some, Halloween isn't just a scary holiday, it's sacred. Skal also interviews American Neo-Pagans, who keep alive the Pagan holiday of Samhain (pronounced Sow-En, not Sam Hane), the time when the walls between the world of the living and the world of the dead are particularly thin.

The book also moves on to examine modern-day Halloween, and the people who go out of their way to turn their front yards, houses and/or backyards into places of horror. One Horror Master is profiled, along with the way he horrifies his neighbors, with some very interesting pictures, from the year an "alien" crash-landed on his roof to him transforming from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.

I found this book rather enjoyable, from the history of Halloween to how Halloween is practiced in America. Currently, it's seen as mostly a kid's holiday. But before, it was primarily an adult holiday, for adults to go out and party on. It may be returning to that a very little bit now, but its fair to say that there are still more child parties on and for Halloween than adult ones, and that for all the "sexy witch" or whatever costumes that are sold to adults, you'll find more kids dressing up than their parents.

And yet, American Halloween celebrations are something very much unlike the celebrations of other nations and peoples. American Halloween is less about sacredness and more about having fun and getting candy. While other countries celebrate ties to dead family members- none more so than Mexico's Los Dios de Las Muertas, Americans have transformed those celebrations into something much shallower than that. Often, the connection with the original meaning of the Holiday is lost.

This was a fascinating book to read, but I found the history of the holiday more interesting than the way it is celebrated today. The rest of it was interesting, too, but I felt the holiday came off rather shallowly in comparison to other celebrations. Recommended.