The visit of Halloween trick-or-treaters to American homes is a well-established custom. Neighborhood children traditionally dress up as witches, ghosts, skeletons, monsters, and other "scary" characters for a door-to-door parade. True to tradition, a mild form of prank-playing vandalism known as "tricking" is indulgently acknowledged by the adult world on this one day of the year. Indeed, Halloween is one time when a minor status reversal - the children's right to demand - is deemed acceptable behavior. In the trick-or-treat ritual, a host of monstrous, mostly supernatural, beings symbolically assault and plunder defenseless homes. They may be rendered harmless, however, by a special ritual act - giving the placatory "treat."
The charm of Halloween belies its significance. Victor W. Turner, author of The Ritual Process, suggests that mild rites of age and sex-role reversal are practiced on this holiday. According to his interpretation, children attack the "authority-holding generation of householders" with tricks similar to the work of more earthly spirits (wearing mostly monster masks and costumers to secure anonymity in order to escape the consequences of tricking). They wear masks of burglars, executioners, and criminals, as well as supernatural beings.
Turner also quotes Anna Freud's observation that children often pretend to be fierce animals and threatening monsters - the very objects of their own fear. "What is being given animal guise in child fantasy is the aggressive and punitive power of the parents, particularly the father." Identification with the terrifying object thus becomes an effective protection from it.
Austrian psychoanalyst Richard Sterba sees another kind of inversion in child-adult encounters at Halloween. Americans suppress the idea of death and generally do not commemorate the dead. Children become surrogate executors of the conscience and "punish" this neglect.
This role reversal, though it happens with adult consent, does not take place without some qualms. Several of our young informants admitted to being afraid while masquerading in scary outfits and uttering scary sounds. Halloween mummers often fear the figures that they and rival groups assume.
Sadly, over the last decade and a half, the ritual of trick-or-treating has dramatically lost its popularity. Year by year fewer participate, and many treats, thoughtfully prepared by caring adults, go unclaimed. Since 1982 the practice has been largely discontinued, perhaps with good reason. For some time the fear has grown that the tables have turned and adults are reciprocating the relatively mild tricks of children with full-fledged brutality. Incredibly, some adults hide pins, razor blades, and glass splinters in apples or inject drugs or poison into candies and other handouts.
Year after year, police departments, the press, food markets, and school authorities appeal to adults to take care of their children and plead with children to beware adult malevolence. Ironically, these warnings, frequently and systematically repeated, have just become part of the Halloween ritual.
Older people now nostalgically recall that Halloween was once genuine fun, with adults playfully failing the guessing game of identifying their "goblin" visitors and
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