Paper Short Abstract:

Modern Halloween traditions, despite their connection with the Gregorian calendar All Saints' Day, dedicated to the "fathers" of the Christian church, are a phenomenon of modern urban culture. Due to cultural globalization and rapid adaptation to the needs of modern urban society, Halloween quickly spread around the world, including Lithuania. Today, we see strong opposition in society both according to ideologies or social groups. First, we will discuss those groups for whom Halloween is a completely acceptable fun pastime. Then about the „guardians of traditional culture“.

Paper Abstract:

Modern Halloween traditions, despite their connection with the Gregorian calendar All Saints' Day, dedicated to the "fathers" of the Christian church, are a phenomenon of modern urban culture. Due to cultural globalization and rapid adaptation to the needs of modern urban society, Halloween quickly spread around the world, including Lithuania. However, not everything is so simple. Today, we see strong opposition in society both according to ideological and social groups. First, we will discuss those groups for whom Halloween is a completely acceptable fun pastime. First of all, this is a part of children, for whom Halloween is a great opportunity to legally have fun and earn money or sweets. Second, representatives of club culture, for whom Halloween is opportunity to have a good time in their cultural group. And, most importantly, business knows very well where it could earn money here. There are far more groups outraged by the “destruction of tradition”. First of all, these are representatives of pro-Christian views. Who, not understanding much about the development of the cultural tradition and unable to critically evaluate sources from different periods, attribute meanings to Halloween that are not characteristic of it. Especially, when active and "enlightened” representatives of the clergy join the discussions on social networks. The guardians of traditional culture do not fare much better. The saddest thing is that representatives of all these social groups see the world only in black/white colors and are always the “only ones who know” what all the other social groups need.