Commodification Of Halloween

Skulls, ghost, masks, and skeletons are symbols seen every year during two famous holidays, Dias de los Muertos and Halloween. There are many people who think Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is the same celebration as Halloween, just the Mexican Version. Is it though? By looking at the celebrations of Dias de los Muertos and Halloween, and their background, then comparing and contrasting each one, an obvious difference will be seen.

Every year millions of kids get dressed up, knock on doors, and beg for candy. With Halloween just around the corner, you all are probably wondering where this strange tradition came from. Every year I have experienced this holiday and have done research on this topic. According to a 2014 Smithsonian.com article, stated by Natasha Geiling, in just one year Americans spent over six billion dollars on candy, costumes, and ghoulish decor in anticipation for Halloween. Many people think all Halloween is about dressing up and going trick or treating but there's more to it than that. The roots and variations from all around are what makes Halloween what it is today. In order to understand this holiday, we will go into the history of Halloween, how it's celebrated around the world, and superstitions revolving it.

“Halloween in the Anthropocene” is a poem written by Craig Santos Perez, an activist for

Thesis Statement: How Halloween has evolved from what it once was to what is now.

Samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween, and it affects people of all ages and ethnicities. When a fear, even a fear that starts off as rational, becomes intense and irrational to the point one goes into shock or cannot think it is considered a phobia. This particular phobia is one of the more common phobias, but it can still be fairly hard to diagnose. Samhainophobia is thought to affect eleven percent of people. To truly understand why this fear affects so many different people and age groups, it is imperative that one understands the history behind Halloween as well as the reasons behind fear itself and how it affects people, what treatments are effective and available to the general public.

Halloween and Dia de los Muertos are very interesting holidays in there own different ways. Halloween and Day of the Dead can be similar but on the bottom line they are very different by the way they decorate, what they eat, and how they celebrate the holidays. The two holidays may seem similar at first but after understanding the complexity of the ideas behind both holidays actions, your opinion can change. For example during Halloween some kids might go trick or treating but in Mexico during the Day of the Dead, people would go to grave sites and have picnics with people who have passed on and a famous sauce they would eat is mole sauce which is like a spicy chocolate sauce. There are a lot of differences to explore about the two

The catholic, mexican holiday, Day of the Dead and the very westernized holiday Halloween may seem very alike with their traditions and themes, but in retrospect, they are very different and have very different origins. Halloween and Day of the Dead happen at the same time, end of October and beginning of November. The background of these two holidays are very spiritual and they have an interesting story of how the Halloween and day of the dead was created. In this essay, I will be talking about the how Halloween and Day of the Dead are celebrated , the origins of Day of the Dead and Halloween, and decorations and celebrations of Day of the Dead and Halloween. Both Day of the Dead and Halloween deal with spooky traditions but they are very different than the stereotypical thought that they are just weird, scary holidays but after reading some background to these two holidays, many people realize there is a lot more to Halloween and Day of the Dead.

Celebrated on October 31st, the festival of Halloween (also known as Samhain) includes dressing in costume, trick or treating, and decorating. Tracing back in history Halloween is considered to be one of America’s oldest holidays, and is still celebrated today. Halloween is believed to come from Celtic rituals. Celtics believed the cosmological myth of Saman (Lord of the Dead). Saman would call on the souls of the people that passed away that year to take them to the afterlife or underworld; the Celtic underworld identifies with the Christian Hell. In order for the spirits to believe they were on their own, the living would wear costumes and mask their identities, along with fairies, witches and demons. This functions as a cosmological myth because it provides a creation story and framework in which this universe occupies and includes many other realms of existence. Another tradition that followed was to give food to the Saman, to persuade him to be more tolerant while he judged the dead ancestors of the living, which he would chose to take to the underworld. In this essay I will further investigate what the origins of Halloween consist of and how it offers reasoning for trick-or-treating. Also I will examine how trick-or-treating, which is still continued today, is connected to ancient Celtic festivals.

As the title suggests Halloween gives off a dark and haunted vibe. “Let us praise the souls of Asian children who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets” is a line from the poem that says asian children build our tech and toys, then jump to their deaths. Another gloomy and sad example is from these lines, “Tonight, Let us praise the souls of native youth whose eyes are open pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned rivers, hearts are the tar sands tailing ponds.” Which translates to saying that indians that live near uranium pit mines have poisoned rivers as a result, which in turn they drink and cause their veins to be filled with poison. The tone in this poem shows a depressing story of oppression, guilt, deceit, and other immoral acts that people do in order to gain wealth never for once thinking of the unseen consequences. Near the end of this poem there is a message that states, “because our costumes won’t hide the true cost of our greed.” meaning that no matter how hard we try to justify our actions, we will eventually have to face our own horrific truth and when we do, we won’t have an excuse to give. The poem is not trying to make what we do as humans seem not that bad, but instead he gives us the blunt truth of our greed that has no limit and the consequence that we will face if we do not change our

C. Thesis Statement: Going from what the meaning of Halloween is in America today and looking back at it’s roots, it has evolved dramatically. And just recently we have been seeing a comeback from one of those roots, but do we know it’s real cultural significance?

The movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas” made $75 million, after being released to the public several times. The movie had Halloween themed songs, as most of them were spooky. Some think it’s a Christmas movie, as the people think most of the songs are Christmas themed. This essay will help the reader understand that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a Halloween movie. Most of the time is spent in Halloween Town!

Borrowing from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money. Over time this tradition turned in to today modern “trick or treating”. In the late 1800s, America turned Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, and witchcraft. As the centuries changed Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century (Kammen).

As Halloween approaches, young people need to be aware of the dangers of alcohol despite positive advertising according to the U.S. surgeon general who spoke at Hynes Auditorium in Boston Friday.

Furthermore, there are many traditional rituals and superstitions associated with Halloween. Since the ancient Celts thought the nonliving roamed the earth, they created costumes out of animal pelts to ward off evil spirits. Fortunetelling and the utilization of large bonfires for sacrifices and purification were also early customs. After the Christianization of the holiday to commemorate saints and martyrs, the same festivities, bonfires, and guising remained, but October 31st was renamed All-Hallows Eve. This inevitably turned into Halloween. Similar to European traditions, America’s Halloween has also evolved throughout the years. Halloween’s recognition was originally restricted in colonial America due to its non-Christian beliefs and practices, and it was practiced at a more local level. According to an online source, “The first celebrations included ‘play parties,’ public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead and tell each other’s fortunes, dance, and sing” (“History of Halloween”). Festivities were akin to European traditions, but also included ghost stories and pranking. Beginning in the twentieth century, Halloween

I would like to address the culture of consumerism, our desire for violence, and the change in gender roles from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, to Boyle’s 28 Days Later.