How did Halloween get so big?

In My Humble Opinion
1

First off, Halloween is not a holiday, it never was a holiday, and it’s ingenuous to call it a holiday. I’m fairly adamant about this…not nearly as much as my views on, say, libertarianism, or the gross overuse of that one goddam line from The Princess Bride, but it’s up there. From where I stand, there are two requirements for something to be considered a holiday:

  1. (important) It’s legally recognized.
  2. (really, really important) I get the day off.

[Note: I am a state employee, so I never have to work during a holiday. Obviously if you’re self-employed or work for a…blech…corporation, your criteria is going to differ somewhat.]

Any day of “observance” that does not meet these requirements is just that, an observance. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Arbor Day, April Fool’s Day, Black Friday, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, what have you. There’s no official standing to any of these, and you can follow or ignore them as you see fit. Heck, you can even make up your own for whatever silly reason you want and attach whatever “traditional” activity to it you like. (So far the only thing I’ve ever actually seen for Star Wars Day were a few deals Apple sent to my IPad.)

So what is Halloween? Well, it’s a day where (primarily) children put on gaudy costumes and go from door to door asking for candy. And…that’s more or less it. Oh, sure, there’s some religious jiggabaheezah hidden in the day’s murky history, and yeah, it’s nice to give kids a day where they can wear whatever they want and not get crap for it, and also teach them that if they show respect for others and follow procedures, they’ll be rewarded for it. Far worse traditions to foist on our youth, I assure you. But at the end of the day, it’s just a day, and not even a full one, at that.

So you can understand my amazement when I saw the Halloween shop…

…oh, yeah, now we have Halloween shops…not costume shops, not novelty shops, not party shops (although they get in on it too, of course)…shops devoted to this one day, which show up really early (it was September 30 this year), and immediately after vanish. JUST LIKE THAT.

…open in my local mall on September 30. And I’m not talking some little kiosk or hole in the wall, this was fully stocked. Every costume, prop, bit of candy, and decoration you might possibly need for this one day.

And it’s not just the usual outlets who get in on it. There are Halloween decorations in the jewelry stores. And Macy’s. And the food court. And the arcade. Heck, the local used bookstore had decorations wall-to-wall. And why let a good costume just sit around all weekend? The clerks for a jewelry store certainly didn’t. (They weren’t even dressed as duchesses or pirates or some other occupation associated with jewelry.)

Did I mention my IPad games? Piano Tiles 2 and Temple Run 2 uncorked their Halloween-themed levels the first week of October. Subway Surf, of course, brought back their Transylvania stage from last year.

How did it reach this point? My first guess was that it was some sort of gradual assimilation into the insanely bloated, sprawling nightmare the “Christmas” season has become, but other than that one movie, I haven’t seen any connection. Macy’s and Sears have their plastic Christmas trees out already, and they look like any other plastic Christmas trees. Nor could I see a connection with any other Fall tradition, LEAST of all Thanksgiving.

2
  1. It IS a holiday.
  2. It got so big because it’s fun.
  3. I bet even Opal celebrated it.
3
  1. It is the eve of a holiday. The biggest holiday celebrations begin on the eve, a custom maintained from back before everybody had watches.
  2. You weird people don’t celebrate November 1st (All Hallows) but that’s because you weird.
  3. Commercialization.
4

It’s a day where adults are allowed — even encouraged — to be a little childish and irrational and have some fun, and has some heavy duty nostalgia attached. Makes sense to me.

5

I remember Halloween costume shops when I was a kid. It’s not a new thing. But I imagine that innovations in shipping have contributed.

6

Halloween has always been fairly big. It is now much more commercialized, and stuffed in your face. Like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentines Day, New Years, ect.

7

Oh no! The horror! … Wait, no. Why would they be?

8

A much more interesting question is how Christmas got bigger than Easter.

Think about it: Which event is more central to Christian dogma, the birth of Jesus or the death and resurrection of Jesus? Obviously the latter. The birth doesn’t even come close.

Yet Easter is just a day, at most. It’s always on a Sunday, so you don’t even get a special day off for it in most places. It certainly doesn’t get a season, despite the fact the traditional Christian calendar of holidays has a number of movable feasts all tied to the date of Easter. Christmas, on the other hand, begins in November (earlier if you’re a retailer) and everyone gets special time off for it even if it happens on a weekend.

Yes, Christmas is a cultural appropriation of the older Midwinter festivals of lights, but Easter’s a cultural appropriation of the older springtime fertility festivals, so they’re even on that count. Yes, Christmas is associated with gift-giving, but so’s Easter, in some families; both of them can just as easily accommodate a special feast, in the usual celebration, so that’s no distinction between them.

There’s a whole industry around Christmas, with clothing, TV specials, movies, and all. Nothing like that exists for Easter, even though it could. Easter is practically a Hallmark Holiday with eggs and candy for the little kids.

(You can apply the same logic to Passover vs Hanukkah for the Jews, but there, the answer is obvious: Blame the Christians.)

9

Well, in the USA, maybe. Although it’s grown a bit in recent years, it’s certainly not that big a deal in the rest of the world.

Anyway, I blame Satan. Old Nick, not the former SDMB poster.

10

Well, up here, October and November are pretty bleak months, so we’re all looking for something to take our minds off the frigid, moist weather and the darkness. It would be better if Halloween were in mid-November, but what can you do?

11

Like Christmas, its for the kids but adults can get away with acting like kids.

Its less about family than the next two holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) so those of us with dysfunctional backgrounds drop a lot of our holiday stress.

The weather is often better than Christmas.

12

Technically it’s teaching kids how to extort their neighbors. i.e. TRICK or treat.
I suspect that a lot of it relates to how Halloween became one of the Great Drinking Holidays:
New Years Eve
Superbowl Eve
St Patrick’s Day
July 4th
Halloween
Blackout Wednesday (The Wednesday Evening Before Thanksgiving)
Christmas

Other countries have similar holidays like Carnivale, Oktoberfest or Cinco de Mayo.
I mean why wouldn’t it? It’s the one night of the year other than St Patrick’s Day or a Santa-Con where full grown adults can get dressed up in silly costumes and wander the streets drunk off their ass. Women can put on sexy slutty outfits without judgement and men can hang out with women dressed in sexy slutty outfits.

In fact, if I were a conspiracy enthusiast, I might even think that the popularity of Halloween was largely manufactured by the Sexy Stripper Costume industry. There are only so many strippers in the country buying sexy maid, sexy construction worker or sexy nurse outfits and that industry has largely moved from costumes to what looks like cheap lycra “evening dresses” that can be quickly taken off for dancing and put back on for walking the floor. But I digress.

13

Just goes to show how much disposable income we have, and how willing we are to spend it on our [del]special little snowflakes[/del] darling children. Where I live, Halloween decorations outshine Christmas decorations by quite a bit. That’s a phenomenon only seen in the last 10-20 years, I believe.

14

It’s also a holiday that (for the most part) is completely inclusive. Everyone gets to particiapte.

Yes, I have Jewish friends who don’t celebrate (St.) Valentine’s day or Hallowe’en, and know that some Christians who feel Hallowe’en is an inappropriate holiday. But for the majority it’s a holiday that cuts across religious and cultural lines and we can all enjoy. In a country not bound by a common culture and religion, those holidays that we can all participate in are particularly fun and help make us cohesive.

15

I was at a Halloween party last night, and I commented on the absurdness of it, while laughing.
“What a strange cultural phenomenon this is. We dress in completely silly outfits and drink booze!”
The thing is, I laughed my guts out and loved the evening. We’re all just goofy kids inside, and Halloween lets us be just that.
As a friend said last night “I wish Halloween happened once a month!”

I’m with you Steve.

Sent from my adequate mobile device using Tapatalk.

16

Halloween is fun. And we should have more festivals type days. Why don’t we have a Carnival type celebration in the US?

17

Well, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras isn’t just a day or two in New Orleans. It lasts weeks and the industries and societies based around it are perpetual.

Halloween is the closest thing to it as a U.S. wide holiday. I personally think that it is the best holiday of all. I live in the greater Boston area which is Halloween central and it is a season here. It starts in early October and really ramps up the couple of weeks before. Halloween falls on a Monday this year but that only spreads it out more. There have been a whole stream of Halloween events the entire weekend already with many more to come. Salem, MA of colonial witch trials fame is a Halloween mecca especially in October but it keeps some of it all year round.

I am 43 and, while Halloween is probably a little bigger now than when I was young, it was never small. I knew it well as a child and it was a huge young adult event when I moved to Boston 20 years ago. I am dead serious when I say that it should be a federal holiday. I would happily trade Thanksgiving for it.

18

In the end, Halloween might have been more resistant to heavy commercialization than even Thanksgiving - but between a heavy push on expensive costumery and decorations, and especially rolling out the candy around the end of August (so that people buy, and then buy again, and then buy again) I think they’ve found a way.

For many reasons, it drives me crazy to have to negotiate around gigantic floor stacks of candy for over a month. But there’s nothing much to compete for a retail push between late August and the end of October, so there there they tower. And block.

19

Actually, it’s about half-way between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice and has its origin in pre-history. The Celts celebrated Samhain, and syncretism followed.

20

People like spooky stuff: monsters and skeletons and witches and zombies and bats and all that.

And, people like dressing up in costumes.

Halloween is our big, culturally-sanctioned opportunity to indulge those interests.