U Ideas of General Interest -- October 2000University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
HOLIDAY CUSTOMSHalloween, like many family rituals, changing with the times
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Contrary to what many Americans assume, Madison Avenue may not be the only force pumping up the presence and popularity of Halloween in the United States.
Some family rituals historians, Elizabeth Pleck among them, argue that baby boomers have brought the holiday to its current hallowed status. Possibly in response to fears about tainted candy and truly evil spirits, boomers started taking their kids trick or treating, then decided to don costumes and let the child in them have some fun, too. Advertisers and marketers -- some of them quite probably baby boomers themselves -- responded, turning out masks and costumes for adults, plug-in pumpkins, skeleton lights and themed leaf bags.
Although Pleck concentrates on other family rituals in her new book "Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family Rituals" (Harvard University Press), she said that Halloween supplies, from Ross Perot masks to miniature peanut butter cups, contribute $400 million to the gross domestic product every October. And, while she concedes that the commercialism of Halloween and so many family rituals causes great unease among cultural critics and others, Pleck, a history professor at the University of Illinois, notes that such complaints "are neither of recent origin nor unique to late 20th century America."
Pleck also believes that despite the feeling some people share about family rituals being static -- "same old, same old" year after year -- family rituals, in fact, are "always in flux." The public just isn't always paying close attention, the historian argues.
For example, family rituals in the United States have become shorter and more child-oriented, Pleck said. They also have become more life-oriented. Another major shift in the 20th century family ritual is away from "the funeral as the ritual high point, to the lavish wedding as the ritual high point."
"This shift appears to reflect a major cultural change in attitudes toward personal happiness, family honor, the couple as individuals, as well as the rising age of the couple and the growth of discretionary income." Other 20th century additions to U.S. family rituals include baby showers, Super Sunday, Kwanzaa and ethnic revivals of rarely practiced customs, such as the Day of the Dead.
Yet another shift in family rituals can be placed in the able hands of the woman sometimes described as the current goddess of domesticity, Martha Stewart. In her book, Pleck wrote that Stewart "combined a celebration of female (commercialized) craft skill with concepts of display (defining what good taste was) and consumption. Like Currier and Ives or Irving Berlin, she understood that nostalgia for the simple country life -- for fresh vegetables from the garden, home-cooked food, domestic crafts, and a loving family set in a country kitchen in rural Connecticut -- sells."
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