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Halloween : From Pagan Ritual to Party Night:

From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Front Cover
15 Reviews
Oxford University Press, Oct 31, 2002 - Social Science - 208 pages
Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise. In this colorful history, Nicholas Rogers takes a lively, entertaining look at the cultural origins and development of one of the most popular holidays of the year. Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, from classical history to Hollywood films, Rogers traces Halloween as it emerged from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end), picked up elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day), arrived in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival, and evolved into an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century. He examines the 1970s and '80s phenomena of Halloween sadism (razor blades in apples) and inner-city violence (arson in Detroit), as well as the immense influence of the horror film genre on the reinvention of Halloween as a terror-fest. Throughout his vivid account, Rogers shows how Halloween remains, at its core, a night of inversion, when social norms are turned upside down, and a temporary freedom of expression reigns supreme. He examines how this very license has prompted censure by the religious Right, occasional outrage from law enforcement officials, and appropriation by Left-leaning political groups. Engagingly written and based on extensive research, Halloween is the definitive history of the most bewitching day of the year, illuminating the intricate history and shifting cultural forces behind this enduring trick-or-treat holiday.
  

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Review: Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

User Review  - Melanie - Goodreads

Not quite as good/informative as I'd hoped it would be, but there is some interesting info about the history of Halloween contained therein. That being said, I think there are better books out there on the subject. Read full review

Review: Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

User Review  - Sarah Waters - Goodreads

This book, written by historian Nicholas Rogers, corrects the many misconceptions held regarding Halloween. Often incorrectly thought as a "satanic" and "evil" holiday by the Religious Right, this ... Read full review

All 13 reviews »

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Selected pages

Contents

II
3
III
11
IV
22
V
49
VI
78
VII
103
VIII
125
IX
139
X
158
XI
173
XII
195
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Halloween : From Pagan Ritual to Party Night: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Halloween : From Pagan Ritual to Party Night: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Nicholas Rogers Professor of History York University
Limited preview - 2002
Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
Nicholas Rogers
Snippet view - 2002
Halloween: from pagan ritual to party night
Halloween: from pagan ritual to party night
Nicholas Rogers
Snippet view - 2002

Common terms and phrases

American apples associated with Halloween Bonfire Night boys British calendar candies Carnival Catholic celebrated Halloween Celtic Christian church City commemorate costumes cultural customs dance Dead death Detroit Free Press Devil's Night divinations dressed Druids England festival Fifth of November fire Folklore gang Greenwich Village Halloween sadism Hallowtide haunted holiday human sacrifice immigrants Ireland Irish jack-o'-lanterns Kingston London Mardi Gras masks masquerade Mexican Mexico Michael Myers monster Montreal Gazette Myers's neighbors Nick Rogers nineteenth century North America observed parade parody party percent Photo by Nick police political popular practices pranks Protestant pumpkins purgatory remarked revelers riot rites rituals sadistic Saints Samhain scare Scottish season sexual social Society sometimes Souls streets teenagers Toronto Evening Telegram tradition trick-or-treat trick-or-treating Tylenol scare University Press Urban Legends Vancouver Vancouver Sun vandalism victims Washington Post witches women York Herald young youths

References to this book

From other books

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Barbara Ehrenreich
Limited preview - 2007
When Crime Waves
When Crime Waves
Vincent Sacco
No preview available - 2005
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From Google Scholar

Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial ...
Jennifer C Mueller, Danielle Dirks, Leslie Houts Picca - 2007 - Qualitative Sociology
Halloween y carnaval: dos recetas para cocinar una fiesta en el ...
Carlos Miñana Blasco
Trick or Treat?: Halloween Lore, Passive Consumerism, and the ...
Susan Honeyman - 2008 - The Lion and the Unicorn
“I Am Shocked, Shocked!”: Breaking taboos in digital gameplay
Elena Bertozzi

References from web pages

Halloween: Free Encyclopedia Articles at Questia.com Online Library
Halloween Halloween From Pagan Ritual to Party Night Nicholas Rogers OXFORD UNIVERSITY...of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rogers, Nicholas, ...
www.questia.com/ library/ encyclopedia/ halloween.jsp

N. Rogers
Recent Publications: Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. (New York: Oxford UP, 2002), x, 198 pp. Paperback edition, 2003. ...
www.yorku.ca/ uhistory/ faculty/ cv/ rogers.htm

Day of the Dead, Month of the Charge Card - New York Times
Day of the Dead, Month of the Charge Card. By KARAL ANN MARLING. HALLOWEEN From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. By Nicholas Rogers. Illustrated. 198 pp. ...
query.nytimes.com/ gst/ fullpage.html?res=9507E0DE153DF934A15753C1A9649C8B63& sec=& spon=& pagewanted=print

Halloween - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ISBN 0-19-285448-8. ^ Rogers, Nicholas (2002). Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. New York: Oxford University Press, 411. ISBN 0-19-514691-3. ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Halloween

Chicago Journals - Winterthur Portfolio
Nicholas Rogers writes in the introduction to Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. “And how can we explain not only its ongoing popularity but also ...
www.journals.uchicago.edu/ cgi-bin/ resolve?WP3801046

Halloween:A Covenant with Death and with Hell
Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, p. 137). Halloween has always been a night of misrule and the outrageous. In recent years, it has been adopted ...
www.av1611.org/ halloween.html

HALLOWEEN PARTY TRICK OR TREAT GEMMA JAMES GINA FRANCESCA
Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. New York: Oxford University Press, 411. ISBN 0-19-514691-3. Heald, Claire. "Boo! Is Halloween too scary? ...
www.solarnavigator.net/ halloween.htm

Powell's Books - Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night by ...
Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, ...
www.powells.com/ biblio?show=9780195146912

goldlyrics.com - The Internet's Biggest Database Of Song Lyrics
Comment: When the time came to read this year's Halloween book, I chose Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night by Nicholas Rogers. ...
www.goldlyrics.com/ store/ 0195168968/ Halloween_From_Pagan_Ritual_to_Party_Night.html

Halloween, Religion, and Culture
Recently Received: Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, by Nicholas Rogers. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Halloween has an ancient pedigree ...
atheism.about.com/ b/ 2004/ 08/ 18/ halloween-religion-and-culture.htm

About the author (2002)


Nicholas Rogers is Professor of History at York University. He is the co-author of Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (OUP) and the author of Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (OUP), for which he received the 1999 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association for the best book on non-Canadian history.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Halloween : From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
TitleHalloween : From Pagan Ritual to Party Night: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night
AuthorNicholas Rogers Professor of History York University
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherOxford University Press, 2002
ISBN0195349105, 9780195349108
Length208 pages
Subjects › 

Social Science / Holidays (non-religious)
  
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