Coming Over

Abstract Halloween did not take firm root in North America until the nineteenth century. The Puritans of New England, like their counterparts in the old country, detested the holiday. Increase Mather, the rector of Harvard, approved of the ban on saints’ days and thought any holiday suffixed -mass, whether Hallowmass or even Christmas, to be an unnecessary concession to the Antichrist. His son, Cotton Mather, concurred. In this Zion in the wilderness, in this land of “Uprightness,” reveling holidays were out. Even to talk of specters and apparitions tended to smack of witchcraft, and superstitious souls who remembered the magic of Halloween were likely wary of making their feelings felt. North American almanacs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century give no indication that Halloween was recognized as a holiday.