Halloween

A fun, highly detailed look at Halloween as a specifically American phenomenon. While it has a global history, Halloween is especially powerful in the US as both a marketable holiday and a source of long-held superstitions, which gives David Skal a lot to work with. Skal is an engaging writer and I particularly liked his cold open to the narrative that dissects the myth of tainted Halloween candy that persists even today.

Fascinating read about the evolution of the modern holiday.

Book Review: Halloween: The History of America’s Darkest Holiday by David J Skal | vexingcircumstance https://vexingcircumstance.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/book-review-halloween-the-history-of-americas-darkest-holiday-by-david-j-skal/

I am a big fan of Halloween so I enjoyed this book about this history of the holiday. It is very thorough, mainly on points of interest people will be most likely interested in. It also covers things not specifically related to Halloween, but associated with it ( horror movies and different cultural celebrations of the dead and macabre.

One criticism of the book is the different forms of narration, it starts of telling a story, and then morphs into a history book, then personal biographies of haunters, then movies. I feel like a bit too much emphasis is placed on the Halloween movie franchise, and many other notable Halloween movies ( Hocus Pocus! ) are left out. Obviously the writer can't include every thing, but perhaps even just mentioning a list of movies with a Halloween setting would have made me happier,

Still, a great read for anyone interested in the holiday and how it go to what it is now by examining what it was earlier.

The bibliographical note reads that this publication is a slightly revised republication of Skal's Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween (2002). This version includes a new afterword and a new set of illustrations. I actually used the former book when I was planning my script for the Richmond Halloween tour. I wish that had been noted but I’m going to overlook this since Skal is a co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula, one of books required for my introduction to literature course, and I’m a little bit of a fan girl.

I think the title will reach a larger audience since the word “death” is a bit ominous in our culture. This is a nice primer for someone to learn about the history of Halloween in the United States and where the history derives. It’s a nice refresher for those of us who are familiar.

What I enjoyed about *both books* in that each begins (the introduction) with an urban legend (about tampered Halloween candy) and then the chapters backtrack into the roots of the holiday and the differences in American cultural traditions. Skal is a cultural critic so he’s clearly done some homework but there are times where I’m not sure where the book is going. In some ways this is good because it isn’t written like a textbook; however, it can be a bit difficult to follow at points.

Skal mentions the urban legend before recounting the horrific tale of a young boy being intentionally poisoned by his father. He discusses the popular Halloween masks of 1974 (Richard Nixon) to how America was setting itself up for such a holiday like Halloween. He makes references to other scholars including Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her work in Death studies. Overall, it’s a nice combination of story, history, and folklore.