Another lurker here. The HP world-building has always been off, neither consistent nor sensible. The only thing it does is support the surface story in a very thin way.
I can only suppose the HP wizarding world, is based on Halloween trappings: pumpkin juice because pumpkins are a Halloween icon, cats and owls the only pets or familiars, robes and pointy hats because those spell "witch" in the popular imagination. I am only bewildered that an obvious take-off on a very British genre, by a British writer, picks up the fancy-dress trappings of this Americanized holiday. The wizarding world as a construct more or less ignores the traditions behind All Hallows Eve or any of its analogs, and simply sports the most commercial version of Halloween and "horror" imagery.
Maybe I'm misreading something here, being familiar with American Halloween and only passingly with British supernatural traditions. But that's what it looks like, especially in the earlier books where the setting is essentially the comic relief to a traditional storyline.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-08-29 02:09 am (UTC)I can only suppose the HP wizarding world, is based on Halloween trappings: pumpkin juice because pumpkins are a Halloween icon, cats and owls the only pets or familiars, robes and pointy hats because those spell "witch" in the popular imagination. I am only bewildered that an obvious take-off on a very British genre, by a British writer, picks up the fancy-dress trappings of this Americanized holiday. The wizarding world as a construct more or less ignores the traditions behind All Hallows Eve or any of its analogs, and simply sports the most commercial version of Halloween and "horror" imagery.
Maybe I'm misreading something here, being familiar with American Halloween and only passingly with British supernatural traditions. But that's what it looks like, especially in the earlier books where the setting is essentially the comic relief to a traditional storyline.