Day of the Dead is taking on Halloween traditions, but the sacred holiday is far more than a ‘Mexican Halloween’

  Many Latinos regularly declare: “Día de los Muertos is not Mexican Halloween.” The declaration is increasingly repeated by non-Latinos too.

  Drawing a clear line between the two holidays is a rhetorical strategy to protect Day of the Dead’s integrity as Mexican cultural heritage and separate it from American popular culture. However, as a Mexican-American who celebrates Día de los Muertos and as a scholar of culture and performance, I believe it’s time to fully acknowledge the cultural intermixing that’s happening between the two holidays.

From scary stories to scowling pumpkins, Halloween has pagan roots

  Halloween these days calls pumpkins to mind, cackling witches, teenagers pulling pranks, and scream masks. You probably know that all this derives from All Hallows’ Eve, the night before the Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day, the time when the dead are remembered.

  But Christianity itself appropriated the tradition from pagan ancestors. And so the night which is, in the secular and commercial world, Halloween and in the Christian calendar, All Hallows’ Eve, has its roots in the pagan Wheel of the Year and the festival of Samhain.

Why are so many people delighted by disgusting things?

  Halloween is a time to embrace all that is disgusting, from bloody slasher films to haunted houses full of fake guts and gore.

  But the attraction to stuff that grosses us out goes beyond this annual holiday.

How Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor became Halloween’s theme song

  Imagine a grand house on a hill, after dark on an autumn night. As the door opens, an organ pierces through the thick silence and echoes through the cavernous halls.

  The tune that comes to many minds will be Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, an organ work composed in the early 18th century. Most people today recognize it as a sonic icon of a certain type of fear: haunting and archaic, the kind of thing likely to be manufactured by someone – a ghost, perhaps – wearing a tuxedo and lurking in an abandoned mansion.

How the god you worship influences the ghosts you see

  If you’ve ever seen a ghost, you have something in common with 18 percent of Americans.

  But while there’s evidence that our brains are hardwired to see ghosts, the apparitions we see tend to vary.

  Historians who study and catalog ghostly encounters across time will tell you that ghosts come in a range of shapes and forms. Some haunt individuals, appearing in dreams or popping up at unexpected times. Others haunt a specific location and are prepared to spook any passersby. Some are the spitting images of what were once real humans. And then there are the noisy and troublesome poltergeists that appear as uncontrollable supernatural forces instead of people.

How do you spot a witch? This notorious 15th-century book gave instructions – and helped execute thousands of women

  Books have always had the power to cast a spell over their readers – figuratively.

  But one book that was quite popular from the 15th to 17th centuries, and infamously so, is literally about spells: what witches do, how to identify them, how to get them to confess, and how to bring them to swift punishment.

When Halloween became America’s most dangerous holiday

   The unquiet spirits, vampires, and the omnipresent zombies that take over American streets every October 31 may think Halloween is all about spooky fun. But what Halloween masqueraders may not realize is that in the early 1970s and well into the next decade, real fear took over.

  The media, police departments, and politicians began to tell a new kind of Halloween horror story – about poisoned candy.

  No actual events explained this fear: It was driven by social and cultural anxieties. And there is a lesson in that about the power of rumors on this day of dark fantasy.

Halloween’s celebration of mingling with the dead has roots in ancient Celtic celebrations of Samhain

  As Halloween approaches, people get ready to celebrate the spooky, the scary, and the haunted. Ghosts, zombies, skeletons, and witches are prominently displayed in yards, windows, stores, and community spaces. Festivities center around the realm of the dead, and some believe that the dead might actually mingle with the living on the night of Halloween.

  Scholars have often noted how these modern-day celebrations of Halloween have origins in Samhain, a festival celebrated by ancient Celtic cultures. In contemporary Irish Gaelic, Halloween is still known as Oíche Shamhna, or Eve of Samhain.

Why believing in ghosts can make you a better person

  Halloween is a time when ghosts and spooky decorations are on public display, reminding us of the realm of the dead. But could they also be instructing us in important lessons on how to lead moral lives?

Roots of Halloween

  The origins of modern-day Halloween go back to “Samhain,” a Celtic celebration for the beginning of the dark half of the year when, it was widely believed, the realm between the living and the dead overlapped and ghosts could be commonly encountered.

10 Things you didn't know about the history of Halloween

10) While today's costumes channel an inner fantasy, they started with a much more solemn purpose.

  One of the earliest examples we have of people donning costumes comes from Hallow Mass, a ceremonial mass dedicated to prayers for the dead. People appealed to their ancestors for everything from happy marriages to fertility, and costumes were a part of that.

How to keep your jack-o’-lantern from turning into moldy, maggoty mush before Halloween

  For many Americans, pumpkins mean that fall is here. In anticipation, coffee shops, restaurants, and grocery stores start their pumpkin flavor promotions in late August, a month before autumn officially begins. And shoppers start buying fresh decorative winter produce, such as pumpkins and turban squash, in the hot, sultry days of late summer.

  But these fruits – yes, botanically, pumpkins and squash are fruits – don’t last forever. And they may not even make it to Halloween if you buy and carve them too early.

Hell, no! Halloween is not ‘satanic’ – it’s an important way to think about death

   American televangelist Pat Robinson once claimed children who celebrate Halloween were unknowingly “worshipping Satan”.

  Despite the absurdity that a child dressing up as a witch is devil worship, the idea that Halloween is linked to something satanic continues to have purchase among some conservative Christians. However, the traditions behind this increasingly popular holiday are far more complex. It has less to do with anything satanic and more to do with superstition and our relationship with death.

Tricking and treating has a history

  Over the past few decades, Halloween celebrations have gained in popularity, not only with children and families but with all those fascinated with the spooky and scary.

  As a scholar of myth and religion in popular culture, I look at Halloween with particular interest – especially the ways in which today’s Halloween tradition came to evolve.

Halloween isn’t about candy and costumes for modern-day pagans – witches mark Halloween with reflections on death as well as magic

  For members of the minority religion of Wicca and witchcraft, part of contemporary paganism, Halloween has never been primarily a children’s holiday. As a sociologist doing research on contemporary pagans for over 30 years, I have observed how it is marked as a sacred day known as Samhain in which death is celebrated.

  This Halloween they might have something to teach us – both about the acceptance of death and staying safe.

Why has Halloween become so popular among adults?

  Halloween used to be kid stuff. To quit dressing up was an important rite of passage. It meant you were one step closer to becoming an adult.

  Not anymore. Today adults have become avid Halloween revelers, especially young adults.

Why is it fun to be frightened?

  Audiences flock to horror films. They get a thrill from movies like “Halloween,” with its seemingly random murder and mayhem in a small suburban town, a reminder that picket fences and manicured lawns cannot protect us from the unjust, the unknown, or the uncertainty that awaits us all in both life and death. The film offers no justice for the victims in the end, no rebalancing of good and evil.

  Why, then, would anyone want to spend their time and money to watch such macabre scenes filled with depressing reminders of just how unfair and scary our world can be?

How the dead danced with the living in medieval society

  In the Halloween season, American culture briefly participates in an ancient tradition of making the world of the dead visible to the living: Children dress as skeletons, teens go to horror movies, and adults play the part of ghosts in haunted houses.

  But what if the dead played a more active, more participatory role in our daily lives?

Halloween, home haunts, and horror movies are about escaping reality

  What is it about horror movies and Halloween that get me (and millions of other people) excited each fall? Is it the crisp autumn air or the candy corn that puts sparkles in our eyes? Is it classic horror movies, such as Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, that get us excited? Not exactly. It is the sense of escape that Halloween brings that gets us excited.

Tricking and treating has a history

  Over the past few decades, Halloween celebrations have gained in popularity, not only with children and families but with all those fascinated with the spooky and scary.

  As a scholar of myth and religion in popular culture, I look at Halloween with particular interest – especially the ways in which today’s Halloween tradition came to evolve.

Why believing in ghosts can make you a better person

  Halloween is a time when ghosts and spooky decorations are on public display, reminding us of the realm of the dead. But could they also be instructing us in important lessons on how to lead moral lives?