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On Nov. 1, 1876, The New York Times declared Halloween “departed,” destined for the grave.
In 2024, consumers are expected to spend $11.6 billion celebrating the holiday, up from $3.3 billion in 2005. Perhaps it is time to eat some crow.
Halloween, steeped in tradition, has transformed from a pagan feast to a celebration with lovingly homemade costumes and treats to one of the largest consumer spending holidays in the United States. Every October — or even earlier — millions of Americans are spending on costumes, decorating their homes and lawns with garish skeletons and spiders and doling out candy bars to little superheroes and witches. But how did this holiday with humble origins become an economic juggernaut with growing global appeal?
Halloween is a marketer’s dream, said Tom Arnold, a finance professor and retail expert at the University of Richmond. It falls on the same day every year, Halloween items are largely consumable (candy needs to be replenished every year and kids outgrow costumes), and pop culture trends can help predict which costumes will be the must-haves each season.
Professor Arnold said the 1970s brought mass-manufactured costumes and individually wrapped candy that made the holiday explode in popularity. It also shifted from a more religious holiday to a secular one.
Even when consumers are worried about their finances, they’ll still open their wallets for holidays like Halloween and Christmas, Professor Arnold said, because “it creates a unique experience at a particular time of the year.”
“Even during the pandemic, consumers went to great strides to preserve these two holidays,” he said.
A holiday with Catholic and Celtic roots comes to America
Halloween itself is a combination of two holidays: All Saints’ Day, which was a Catholic holiday that was moved to Nov. 1 to co-opt the other, Samhain, an old Celtic pagan holiday, said Lisa Morton, author of “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween.” In fact, the holiday’s name is a shortened version of “All Hallows’ Eve,” with “hallow” meaning saint.
Samhain (pronounced saa-wn) was the New Year’s festival for Irish Celtic tribes, held at a time when they were entering their long, cold winter. They celebrated it with a three-day festival and scary stories, which is most likely the source of Halloween’s macabre side.
Halloween made its way to the United States in the 1840s with Scottish and Irish immigrants who brought their favorite holidays with them as they fled from famine. Magazines, a nascent industry at the time, published stories about “quaint Irish and Scottish celebrations” that caught the attention of American mothers who started hosting Halloween parties for their children.
Trick-or-treating came about as a way to distract children who, by 1900, had taken over the holiday. Kids played simple but mischievous pranks, like disassembling and then reassembling a farmer’s buggy on a barn roof. However, as time passed and America began urbanizing, the pranks became “very destructive,” Ms. Morton said. Communities needed a way to “buy off” gangs of feral children who were terrorizing neighbors by smashing light fixtures, setting tires on fire and even tripping people on sidewalks.
Neighborhood “house-to-house parties” were held for kids, Ms. Morton said, noting that this origin of trick-or-treat also provided the basis for today’s haunted attractions (think haunted houses and mazes) as people would set up “trails of terror” in their basements or at local parks. Haunted houses are now a seven-figure industry of their own.
Candy and costumes go commercial
When trick-or-treating became widespread, costuming also gained in popularity. Costumes had been a part of the fun dating back to the 19th century, Ms. Morton said, but they took off in the 1950s, when big retailers and costume stores got involved.
“If you’re a kid, who wouldn’t rather be Superman at Halloween than yet another thief made up from your dad’s old clothes out of the attic,” she said.
Candy, the most popular spending category for the holiday today, took off in the ’50s, too, Ms. Morton said, as the end of World War II meant sugar was back in stock.
“One of the interesting things about Halloween is the way it continually morphs,” Ms. Morton said. “We see it change almost from century to century.”
She added: “I’m fascinated to see where it’s going to go from here.”
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