Halloween
and Other Festivals of Death and Life
Edited by Jack Santino
The University of Tennessee Press, 4th print, 1994 - 2000
"An enthusiastic intellectual exploration of this fascinating holiday....
a fresh look at a set of very old customs." - Agnus Gillespie, Rutgers University
"This is the first collection dedicated to the study of Halloween and related holidays and is an
important contribution to scholarship on American festivals and popular culture.
Jack Santino has assembled a volume that illustrates the ways Halloween differs in rural, suburban,
and urban environments... Several papers examine the processes of commercialization and commodification
in Halloween, while others consider... the history of the celebration." - Robert Lavenda, St. Cloud State University
Why do we celebrate Halloween? No one gets the day off, and unlike all other major holidays it has no religious or governmental affiliation.
A survivor of our pre-Christian, agrarian roots, it has become one of the most popular and widely celebrated festivals on the contemporary
American calendar.
Jack Santino has put together the first collection of essays to examine the evolution of Halloween from its Celtic origins through its
adaptation into modern culture. Using a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, the thirteen essayists examine customs, communities,
and material culture to reveal how Halloween has manifested itself throughout all aspects of our society to become not just a marginal survivor
of a dying tradition but a thriving, contemorary, post-industrial festival. Its steadily increasing popularity, despite overcommercialization
and ctiticism, is attributed to its powerful symbolism that employs both pre-Christian images and concepts from popular culture to appeal
to groups of all ages, orientations, and backgrounds. However, the essays in this volume also suggest that there is something ironic
and unsettling about the immense popularity of a holiday whose main images are of death, evil, and the grotesque.
Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life is a unique contribution that questions our concepts of religiosity and spirituality
while contributing to our understanding of Halloween as a rich and diverse reflection of our society´s past, present, and future identity.
The Editor: Jack Santino is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.
(Bovenstaande tekst komt van de achterkant van het boek)