Customer Reviews

Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Like many in the baby boom generation, I grew up loving Halloween and have been reluctant to give the holiday up. For years I had a rather elaborate yard haunt that seemed to grow bigger and bigger each year. I haven't put on the annual production in a while but one of these Octobers the casket is going to come out of the garage then its trick-or-treaters beware. With that in mind, one day while browsing around Amazon I came across this book and it caught my interest given my love for the macabre holiday and its traditions.

David Skal in this book gives the reader a quick overview of the holiday. There is a little on the history, a little on the traditions, a little on the legends and a little on about the darker side of Halloween. There is not however much detail on any subject. For example his chapter about Halloween movies deals almost exclusively with the "Halloween" movie series and its shortcomings. If he had just switched over to television he could have written an entire chapter just on The Simpsons, let alone all of the other series that have started to do Halloween episodes, something almost unheard of before 1990 or so.

I found his chapter on debunking the poison candy myths to be one of the best in the book and was of course attracted to the chapter on yard haunts. The chapter he offers about witches was also interesting although I am sure there are some Salem merchants who would disagree. Overall this is a pretty good book but it could have been much better. The appearance of the author's personal agenda on occasion didn't help but overall I just never really got a feel for what he was trying to say about Halloween. I enjoyed the book and did pick up a few bits of information but I couldn't help but think something was missing. The man has to love Halloween to have written so much about it but that love for the holiday just doesn't come across in this book.

Yes, there is something about Halloween that has a great appeal to my generation. I can't really explain it and so I guess I can't complain if Mr. Skal can't either. This is not a bad book; it just doesn't live up to the glory of the holiday it is about.

Being a fan of Mr. Skal's writing (Monster Show is an annual literary tradition for me) and of Halloween in particular, I picked up this book hoping to find a detailed historical account of Halloween and all of its manifestations (from cultural to the commercial).

The initial chapters delivered this perfectly, and I thoroughly enjoyed his account of the origins of Halloween and its cultural significances, however, beyond this riveting opening, the author goes on to pursue disparate topics marginally related to, or peripherally effected by Halloween. The whole came off a little disjointed, with too much emphasis given to topics that might have made better footnotes than chapters. I would rather have had pages of more in-depth information on the Jack-o-lantern or druids than the West Coast Pride parades. That's not to say the borderline topics of the individual chapters weren't interesting, I enjoyed them all and found some of them truly fascinating in their own right, but I couldn't help but want to revisit the initial chapters' themes.

I wanted more History with my Halloween, as per the book's title.

Granted the first half of this book may be reason enough to buy it (The Candy Man story gave me the creeps), but ultimately, I would rather have had a 300 page detailed exploration of the themes and ideas brought up in the first half of the book, with the remainder of the chapters' topics sprinkled about where necessary. Still, it's a well researched, well written book that can enlighten anyone with more than a passing interest in all things Halloween, I have certainly learned a lot reading this book. There may be a few rocks in this trick-or-treat bag, but ultimately it's a rewarding and engaging read.

Although I appreciate Amazon.com for providing a forum for customer reviews, it needs to be pointed out that the review of my book DEATH MAKES A HOLIDAY by "Zaine Ridling" is an unattributed cut-and-paste of a piece actually written by USA TODAY reporter David Colton and published by USA TODAY last week. While the review is very favorable, I hope that Amazon.com will nonetheless take appropriate steps to give a correct attribution to this copyrighted work. As an author, I am sensitive to issues of copyright law. USA TODAY deserves an attribution, if not an apology.

In order to post this message, I am required to "rate" my own work. I will dodge the issue by going for the neutral middle ground -- a "3." (The system doesn't allow me to chose 2.5.)

I really enjoyed "Death Makes a Holiday"; I thought it was a fascinating and thorough exploration of a holiday whose origins were always mysterious to me. (They're still somewhat mysterious, as no one can explain for certain where all the traditions came from.) One of the other reviewers complained that he already knew some of the information in the book, but I've never found a history of Halloween that answers the questions this one does; maybe my local library needs to beef up their Halloween section. The book's approach is very personal: the author spends a lot of time on topics he finds interesting, such as monster movies, that not every historian would consider strictly relevant to the celebration of Halloween. However, I found those topics interesting, too, so I didn't mind. Skal's writing style is intelligent but conversational, so the book is a breeze to read. I especially enjoyed his first-hand interviews with haunted-house creators, and Sara Karloff. I wouldn't recommend the book for kids, though, because there are descriptions of real-life murders that are actually quite scary, even for an adult.

This is one of those books that is very hard to put down if you're a fan of Halloween as I am. I found this book to be extremely enjoyable and easy to read because it's informative and fun at the same time.

In this book the author shares some stories, both positive and negative, about Halloween. This includes the trendy panics of candy tampering, religious nuts attacking the holiday for everything it's worth, the inevitable commercialization, people who go out of their way to make awesome Yard Haunts and Haunted Houses, movies that focus on or that relate to the holiday, and even a chapter about the Halloween after September 11th, 2001. In this book the reader will discover the history of Halloween (even the correct pronunciation of Samhain), and why certain people feel certain ways about the holiday. An absolute must for anyone who wants so gain or further his or her knowledge about this traditionally misunderstood holiday.

HAIL HALLOWEEN!

As a student of the folklore of calendar customs, I eagerly picked up Death Makes a Holiday. And it was worth it! It is not a standard history; instead, the book is "episodic" in that each chapter covers a completely different subject than the previous ones, making this less a unified book and more a collection of interesting essays.

Each essay *is* interesting, though of varying strength. The chapter on the history of Halloween is the best, especially when Skal is showing off his in-depth collection of primary sources. The film chapter is almost *too* detailed, with a rapid-fire pace that one would expect from an expert on horror films, but that leaves the reader winded. The chapter on witches is the weakest, less about Halloween's adoption of the witch than it is about Salem's exploitation of it.

All in all, Skal's book is a welcome addition to the scholarly Halloween shelf.

Has the world gotten too scary for Halloween?

For a second terror-filled October, the prospect of costumed monster kids cavorting across lawns and giggling in the glow of pumpkin-lit doorways is filling parents with dread.

But in a surprisingly timely look at America's second-biggest holiday, horror historian David J. Skal argues that it is precisely such "death anxiety" that gives Halloween its dark and playful power.

"Halloween is a holiday that refuses to play by anyone's rules," Skal writes in Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. "Unpredictable and unrepentant, Halloween also remains stubbornly unofficial and underground, and this may be the key to understanding the tumult that regularly erupts in its name."

From the urban myth of poisoned treats in the 1970s - Skal finds only one documented case of such tampering - to the cultural wars over costumes and religion, Skal celebrates a holiday in which "death reigns triumphant but no one ever has to grieve."

Kids have always known the safety of that mask. Birthdays and the Christmas season have their charms, but Halloween remains the true holiday of childhood.

An ungodly brew of Celtic rituals, medieval devils, English revels and an autumnal equinox of death, the holiday was easily a millennium old when it arrived here, rough and in rags with Irish fleeing the potato famine of 1846.

Ghoulies and ghosties came, too, of course. But America added a wicked grin to the macabre: pumpkins and skeletons, witches and brooms, dark covered bridges and slow-blinking owls - a $6 billion treat when the candy and costumes and haunted theme parks are added up each year.

Commercialized, bowdlerized, Disneyized and demystified, Halloween is America's "patchwork holiday, a kind of cultural Frankenstein stitched together quite recently," Skal observes.

Trick-or-treating didn't knock on America's door until the Depression, "a property-protection scheme" as homeowners tried to buy off the street toughs who ran riot in the late '30s. By the postwar '50s, the candies were not a gift but a childhood entitlement.

"If trick-or-treating had previously been a localized, hit-or-miss phenomenon, it was now a national duty," Skal writes.

The author is at his best when he takes on the perennial forces that seem hellbent on slowing this dance of chills. Whether faced with Tylenol scares, Detroit fires, anthrax attacks or intolerance of gay parades, Halloween survives.

And if Skal is right - if fear, terror and even snipers fuel the need for a gentler form of anxiety - then this Halloween season might be needed more than ever.

Boo!

Copyright, USA TODAY

This book doesn't live up to its billing.Although there is a bit about the origin of Halloween and its evolvement over the centuries;it's pretty superficial and not developed.
Far too much of the book is about the degutting of Halloween and the movie industry and its horror films since the 1930's.
Halloween is about one particular day ,while the stuff this book is padded with is just horror , ghost material and the version put out by the Martha Stewart mentality.An in depth effort on Halloween would take much more research than displayed and purported to be a "cultural history".
This book has about as much depth about Halloween as a book about Frosty the Snowman would have about Christmas.But then again,people who see Christmas as a commercialized holiday of nothing more than festive lights and gifts might feel this book tells all there is about Halloween.
A more appropiate title for this book might have been"The dismantling and misreprentation of Halloween since the 1930's"

Anyone who has read "The Battle for Christmas" by Stephen Nissenbaum and is looking for a companion book for Halloween...run. This scattered book talks less about the holiday's history than of its contemporary manfestations (both real and imagined). It meanders in all directions indulging more in Skal's peripheral interests like September 11th and gay-pride parades than in uncovered history. Almost as in search for a suitable number of pages, Skal almost endlessly describes the plots of movies we already know and muses so shamelessly about tourist attractions in Salem that it begins to read like an ad for the Visitors Bureau. This is an overwritten introduction for what could have been. Lots of fluff for those of you who don't want too much information muddying up that slick cover.

The history of Halloween we find here is selective, not all-encompassing. Skal has picked a handful of topics to which he has collected a score of personal anecdotes and stories from people across the country, with occasional interjections of analysis thrown in.

On the plus side, the personal anecdotes are interesting and fun; photos showing early 20th century Halloween-themed postcards are delightful; and one chapter, which (among other things) details the gay community's association with the holiday is fascinating.

However, these positives are outweighed by several problems.

A sense of "been there, done that", permeates much of the book. While the inclusion of certain subjects in any history of Halloween is almost mandatory - guaranteeing a certain repetition of information - the fact remains that some will have already read much of what is included here.

A chapter entitled Halloween On Screen spends more time detailing the storylines of the (Michael Myers) HALLOWEEN movies than trying to find some underlying themes or connections between Halloween-related films and the holiday itself.

Lastly, I lost faith in the book's factual accuracy. In one paragraph, mention is made of a particular film. The first thing to catch my attention was an incorrect year attached to the movie. Second, a questionable statement is made concerning the fate of the young female student. Depending on one's interpretation of this statement, this statement is also incorrect. That two errors are found back-to-back just made me question what else in the book might be inaccurate.

All considered, I do not recommend DEATH MAKES A HOLIDAY. In addition to the above problems (and others not mentioned), when one considers the book comes in at under 200 pages (when index and notes are subtracted), the price tag is high for the product delivered. And when you start doubting a book's facts...