That matters in a world in which many young adults are stuck in unfulfilling jobs.Ĭultural critic Malcolm Harris argues that young adults – despite being highly educated and hardworking compared to older cohorts – rarely find jobs matching their credentials and abilities.ĭuring Halloween, hard work and creative thinking matter. Young adults I’ve spoken with often identify this as their favorite part of the holiday – the chance to be, at least for a night, whatever they wish to be.Ĭostumes are identity work, but they are also just plain work. The possibilities are endless. Witch? Robot couple? Sexy Robot? Emoji? Banksy’s shredded art? Most obviously, Halloween costumes let them experiment and explore self and identity. So why might an emerging adult be drawn to Halloween? Others have a less rosy view of emerging adulthood, describing it as a time of fear and anxiety about an unknowable future. There’s also a sense of wonder and possibility. Mysterious light haunts Chapel Hill railroadĪccording to these experts, features of emerging adulthood can include identity exploration, focus on the self and a feeling of being caught between two worlds. In recent years, psychologists and sociologists have coined a term for this transitional life stage, which usually spans someone’s 20s and 30s: “emerging adulthood.” Transitions to adulthood have become uncertain, drawn out and complicated. Traditional markers of adult responsibility and independence – family, career, home ownership – have either been delayed or abandoned altogether, by choice or necessity. Today’s young adults, it could be argued, are living in a sort of purgatory. The ‘emerging adult’ and the space between Later, gays and lesbians carved out Halloween as a space where their differences could be celebrated not stigmatized. By the 1950s, it had become a night for children.
But as they assimilated, they spread the holiday to the rest of the country. Initially, their Halloween traditions set them apart. More than a century ago, Irish immigrants, who brought their Halloween traditions with them to America, used the celebration to strengthen community ties.
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Halloween has also been a holiday embraced by those who were not full members of society. More recently, debates about skimpy costumes tap into broader concerns about young girls growing up too quickly. Haunted Tennessee: Which Bell Witch legend do you believe?įor example, urban legends about razor blades in apples in the 1970s reflected cultural anxieties about loss of community and fear of strangers. Historian Nicholas Rogers has argued that many of the trends and rituals of the holiday are actually tied to conflicting social values. Halloween, with its emphasis on identity, horror and transgression, can tell us about who we want to be and what we fear becoming. Thanksgiving feasts depend on shared understandings of family and national origin stories. Christmas gift-giving rituals shed light on how we manage social relationships. Sociologists tell us if you want to understand a culture, look at its holidays. If Halloween has become more popular among adults, it’s because traditional markers of adulthood have become less clear and less attainable. Young adults’ embrace of Halloween could have something to do with the fact that adulthood itself has changed. I’ve been studying how young adults are celebrating Halloween, and what sort of relationship this might have to the changing norms and expectations of adulthood. Some blame it on millennials’ refusal to grow up and enter the “real world.”īut that’s too simplistic of an explanation.
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