Discuss Halloween as an Example of an Antifestival

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The Answer is Halloween is a holiday that has evolved from a pagan religious observance to a secular event. However, in contrast to Christmas, the rituals of Halloween (e.g., trick-or-treating and costume parties) primarily involve non-family members. Halloween is an unusual holiday because its rituals are the opposite of many other cultural occasions. Contrasting with Christmas, it celebrates evil instead of good and death rather than birth, and it encourages revellers to extort treats with veiled threats of "tricks" rather than rewarding only the good. Because of these oppositions, Halloween has been described as an antifestival in which the symbols associated with other holidays are distorted. For example, the Halloween witch can be viewed as an inverted mother figure. The holiday also parodies the meaning of Easter, by stressing the resurrection of ghosts, and of Thanksgiving, by transforming the wholesome symbolism of the pumpkin pie into the evil jack-o-lantern. Furthermore, Halloween provides a ritualized, and therefore socially sanctioned, context in which people can act out uncharacteristic behaviours and try on new roles: Children can go outside after dark, stay up late, and eat all the candy they like for a night. The otherwise geeky guy who always sits in the back of class comes dressed as a Sacha Baron Cohen character and turns out to be the life of the party.

Discuss Halloween as an Example of an Antifestival

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