Halloween 2010

Today is Halloween, one of the most widely celebrated holidays on our calendar and one of the most unique.

Most holidays in American culture can be divided into two categories, religious (Easter) and historical or national (Independence Day, Thanksgiving), and there are a few that overlap and exist in both categories at the same time (namely Christmas, which simultaneously exists as a religious holiday but is widely celebrated in a nonreligious fashion). And like most holidays and traditions, they serve a cyclical function in the culture as they remind and reinforce our myths and beliefs about ourselves. Every Thanksgiving we reenact the mythology of the Pilgrims and their feast with the Native Americans, even though the facts of history have little to do with the story that we keep retelling each generation. Christmas, in the religious version of the holiday, retells the story of Christ’s birth and represents renewed hope; the secular Christmas, in its most positive incarnation (as opposed the crass commercialism of the season), expresses a vision of America as a giving culture that cares for the unfortunate (while simultaneously giving Americans an excuse to ignore those in need in the other eleven months of the year).

Halloween is unique in that it is not explicitly religious—spiritualists who actively celebrate the holiday in a religious or semi-religious manner are few in number—but it also isn’t historical, at least not in an American context. There is a tradition of American Halloween celebration but it is not deeply rooted in our identity the way Thanksgiving is. There isn’t a cultural story or myth about Halloween that is attached to it like the story of the Pilgrims or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. No figure of national importance represents Halloween the way George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are linked to Presidents Day, although references to Hollywood movie monsters like Frankenstein and Michael Myers often suffice. And yet, Halloween has become one of the most popular holidays on the calendar.

Halloween’s rise to cultural prominence has been largely based on economics. The holiday is extraordinarily profitable for retailers of all kinds. But that isn’t all of it.

The rise of Halloween to the cultural status it now possesses primarily occurred in the 1970s through the present day, and it plays out against a background of seemingly contradictory cultural trends: the rise of politically active conservative Christianity and the collapse of traditional religious structures in people’s lives.

Throughout the 1980s, social conservatives pushed back against Halloween, decrying Halloween celebrations in public schools and putting forth urban legends of razor blades in candy bars and satanic ritual abuse. The result was partly effective. The tradition of children trick or treating, a staple of Halloween celebrations in suburban neighborhoods since the 1950s, went on the decline. In the short term, it would seem that the social conservatives had won.

But while social conservatives of the 1980s were taking Halloween away from children, the holiday adapted into an adult celebration. As open expressions of sexuality became increasingly accepted in mass media and by the culture at large, retailers found that they could profit off of it and provided the means for the public to indulge it. As the demand grew so did the supply—and vice versa. This of course had an escalating effect that lead to Halloween becoming the carnival of flesh that is has become today.

At the same time, religion’s place in the traditional social structure continued to erode. Church attendance was and is in free fall and the number of people publicly identifying themselves as atheists has risen. The effect of this on the culture is wide ranging, but the angle of it that relates to the rise of Halloween is the search for something sacred. In an environment where the traditions and symbols of spirituality have had their meanings diluted, the culture is in search of something to believe in. Robbed of the myths that traditionally gave them comfort, Halloween has been adopted as a replacement.

The various ways we celebrate Halloween reveals an attempt by a post-religious culture to retain its sense of wonder and mystery. Gathering around the television set to watch horror movies is not all that different from sitting around a campfire and listening to an elder convey the myths of our ancestors. And horror films often create the most visceral reactions in the viewers, either of fear or disgust, making them emotionally rather than intellectually stimulating. Dressing in costumes while drinking an elixir that undermines our mental faculties and then parading, strutting, and thrusting about on a dance floor has all the characteristics of a “primitive” ritual. In these acts we construct a sort of post-modern sacrament, using the same signifiers but always conscious that it is a cultural ritual.

It’s not that the culture is regressing. In fact, it is at some level maturing as it adjusts to a world after the death of the gods. Mankind, for all his technical achievements and philosophical advancements, still has, and perhaps always will have, one foot in the cave. Halloween provides an outlet for Eros and Thanatos to work themselves out. It’s true that not all of this is healthy; our month long love affair with fear and sex can be a bit like binge drinking behavior. But like an inexperienced drinker who overcompensates, hopefully we’ll eventually reach a point where everyday has a healthy recognition and acceptance of desire.

What we see in the present day Halloween is a new sacrament emerging. It is Dionysian in its values and post-modern in its orientation, but it also represents the emergence of a uniquely American holiday. The liberation of American culture from the tyranny of superstition while also allowing for the satisfaction and pleasure that indulging superstition brings could be the most sacred thing of all.