Halloween: turning to the supernatural to work through our anxieties

Halloween is now firmly part of the seasonal and consumer calender – but, unlike other celebrations that promote gift-giving, family, love and friendship, Halloween involves disruption, transgression and an open engagement with darker emotions and fears. These aspects have caused US sociologist Amitai Etzioni to describe Halloween as a “tension-management holiday”. This suggests Halloween is a public ritual in which repressed social and cultural anxieties might be safely expressed and relieved.

The expressions include rituals such as carving ugly faces into vegetables, ducking for apples and dressing up as dark or supernatural figures. That these feature around the world in various forms show that Halloween is the global melting pot of ideas that come together around October 31.