Halloween

• “Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.”

• “In receiving something in their hands, they establish, on a symbolic level that they do not understand, a brotherly exchange between the visible and the invisible worlds. That is why the Halloween masquerades . . . are in fact sacred ceremonies.”

• “It is as if French society were looking for a kind of civil religion capable of replacing Christian symbolism … At Halloween the dead are imitated and their ‘ghosts’ come back to frighten us and threaten us with death. On All Saints’ Day, in contrast, we affirm that the departed are alive and that we are promised to rejoin them in the City of God.”

• “Halloween at the end of the millennium has become a major party night for adults, arguably the most important after New Year’s Eve. An estimated 65 percent of American adults take part in Halloween, beyond, that is, simply handing out candy.”

• “Halloween in the manner it is today. In the days of homemade costumes, revelers did not draw upon the stock characters from the early horror genre, whether Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, or King Kong. They were more likely to emulate Charlie Chaplin or Mae West than Universal pictures monsters.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.