WHEN WE BECAME SPOOKY: MEDIA, LITERATURE, FOLKLORE, AND POPULAR CULTURE AND THE CREATION OF THE MODERN HALLOWEEN 1860-1945
Open Access
- Author:
- Bowman, Karen Lee
- Area of Honors:
- American Studies (University College)
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- John Rogers Haddad, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Ronald Walker, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Halloween
Women's Journals
Halloween and Hollywood
Halloween Pranking - Abstract:
- At the onset of the Civil War, Americans did not celebrate Halloween in a unified and coherent way. That is not to say that Americans did nothing spooky in late October. Indeed, a person alive in 1860 would have witnessed different groups practicing strange rituals, sharing ghostly tales and customs, and enjoying dark festivals, much as their European ancestors had done. However, these disparate cultural forms were inconsistent, scattered, and unpredictable. Different people practiced Halloween in different ways, and many people did not observe the holiday at all. When we fast forward to the end of the Second World War, we remark that a dramatic change has taken place. By 1945, nearly all Americans have not only embraced Halloween, they celebrate the holiday in a uniform way. How did this transformation happen? This thesis tells that story. It explains how an eclectic hodge-podge of European folklore, customs, rituals, games, and practices evolved over time into a single set of unified practices that I call “the modern Halloween.” Though several factors influenced this process, this thesis focuses on the role of women’s mass market magazines in the mid-nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century. Indeed, a central argument of this thesis is that these magazines instructed thousands of American mothers and house wives how to celebrate the holiday. It was through the act of reading that mothers learned about costumes, party games, trick or treating, benign pranks, and fortune-telling. When those women then went on to construct the holiday in a way that their children and families would love, the modern Halloween was born.