Halloween harkens back to ancient bacchanalias. With the birth of agriculture 12,000 years ago, modern man became more staid in his ways--living in one place, having more kids, praying to bigger gods. But civilization, as Freud said, has its discontents. To stay bonded and happy, groups need appointed times when everyone can just cut loose.
"Even medieval Catholics in Europe had a day when they would read the Bible backwards, and priests would dress up like donkeys," says neuropsychologist Allan Combs. Throughout history, people did things at certain times that would have been considered sinful ordinarily.
Such as dressing like a tart or pretending cannibalism is fun?
"Halloween allows people to express their shadow side in a safe and socially sanctioned way," says human consciousness researcher Stanley Krippner. You can bypass your logical, rational mind--the pre-frontal cortical lobe--and get more in touch with your free, emotional side--the limbic system. It's a system that's always operating no matter how held back and restrained.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt agrees that this change of consciousness is a release. "It's the theme of much human activity, from the theater to psychedelic drugs to spinning around on a hillside." Unfortunately, he adds, today's October 31 does a shoddy job of encouraging the ecstatic joy of self-loss evoked by ancient pagan festivals.
Halloween may have all the right ingredients--it takes place at night, you dress in costume, adopt different roles, and experience social leveling. But it falls short of its purpose: building love, trust, and community. According to Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, Halloween is a bastardized, perverted version of the real thing. In his view, our best hope for self-transcendence is to attend a rave or maybe even Burning Man.
Every August 50,000 people converge at Burning Man--held in the Nevada desert. This performance-art festival is an amalgamation of costumes, synchronized movement, music, body painting, and creativity (not to mention psychotropic drugs). It's an event that transforms neurotic individuals into beneficent groups. The hallucinatory effects are temporary, but the sense of belonging to something larger remains.
Is there no hope for Halloween? Perhaps the San Francisco or Greenwich Village gay pride parades on this day come close. Haidt notes that such a beleaguered and oppressed community would have good reason to come together and dance the night away.
I begin to long for a tribe. Egg-splattered windshields and devil horns on barflies seem lame. Little kids in ghost costumes trekking sidewalks for Milk Duds--tepid. Halloween as a festival absolutely does not provide.
But as the only American holiday without overt religious or patriotic significance, it provides pleasure without guilt.
My atheist mom goes all out for Halloween, amassing over the years an impressive collection of pumpkin-related kitsch. She's proud of her ultra-liberal, anti-mawkish nature, but I doubt she wants to feel as politically isolated as she often does.
One day a year, what she and the rest of the neighborhood celebrate are the same. There are no warring cosmologies. No feeling part of a left-out minority (or needing to acknowledge one).
In the end, this watered-down holiday is true to its hedonistic roots. We're free of worry--go ahead and step on my toe. All is silly, so little offends. Let loose and enjoy the night.
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