New Zealanders tend to be skeptical of Halloween as an imported, consumerist tradition that has no connection with our society.
But Halloween springs from a Celtic tradition thousands of years old, Samhain, and was originally a commemoration of summer passing into winter - a time where the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead was especially porous.
Dr Amy Whitehead is a social anthropologist of religion at Massey University.
Being born in the Northern Hemisphere and making her home in Aotearoa, she's experienced the holiday in autumnal, Halloween-mad America as well as here in our springtime, where she estimates only one in every eight houses in Auckland are welcoming of trick-or-treaters.
She joins Emile Donovan to share the origin of traditions like trick-or-treating, witches' broomsticks, dressing up, and carving pumpkins.
Photo: 123RF
