Professor Sharon

“The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.”  Evelyn Waugh

The “Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keiller” reports that today is this author’s birthday, and provides us with this quote.  Just this past week, I’ve been having some interesting conversations with young children, pre-service teachers and family about Halloween, and “inventing horrors.”  I’m curious about its history in the US; I know that there are several religions and cultures that observe the last day of October or the first day of November in various ways in honor of their dead.

When I was a child, I remember that Halloween was about children, and thus involved a lot of “cuteness” 50 plus years ago.  The cuter or sweeter the costume the better — horror inspired costumes were frowned upon – the scariest allowed was really a sheet and you were a ghost.  But even that was considered the lazy way out of the holiday.

When a child recently said to me that Halloween decorations all had to be scary, not sweet (like a kitten in a pumpkin hat, for example), I became curious about this need to have such horror, blood and guts and visual disgustingness in our lives.  I don’t have an answer – I plan to put this curiosity on my list to discover more about – I suspect cultural anthropologists or sociologists may have theories.  For now, I just have the curiosity.

Why do we humans need to feed ourselves gore and blood and guts for entertainment?