Happy Halloween?
I have read that Halloween is now the second biggest grossing holiday for retailers, after Christmas. It’s certainly a very big deal now. Stores begin putting out their displays more than a month beforehand, movies are released for Halloween, and anyone who has anything to sell begins to “tie in” their sales pitch to the holiday in the last couple of weeks before October 31.
The holiday has an odd history. Celebrating wildness, devilry, and death has always been a difficult business in this country. We’re very conflicted about it. When my father was a child in the 1930s, Halloween was a dangerous wild mess in which he and his friends destroyed property and committed various other crimes. A favorite trick was tipping over an outhouse. In some parts of the country there are still traditions that recall the original Roman holiday of “Pandemonium”, e.g., Devil’s Night in Detroit.
When I was a child in the 1970s, Halloween was dress-up and candy for kids. We all made or bought clumsy costumes, and just after dark but before it was “dangerous”, we toddled about our neighborhood begging candy. The neighbors had a lit pumpkin or maybe a spooky record playing, and there were some decorations. It was loads of fun for young kids. Once in a while the adults would have a costume party too, but that was pretty rare.
Now it’s a full-fledged Adult Party Holiday. Offices have workers in costumes. People go to multiple parties in one night. There’s a whole lot of drinking. Forty-year-olds ask each other “what are you going to be for Halloween?”. And the money rolls in, probably mostly for beer and party supplies. Even fundamentalist Christians who actually remember what the holiday is about and want to avoid celebrating the occult will have a “harvest party”. I noticed, for example, that big chain retailers are calling the holiday “Friday October 31″ to avoid offending the people who want prayer and pumpkins but no devils.
And the decoration bit has gone straight off the rails now. Ordinarily normal suburban homes are lit red and stacked with skulls, and a repellent “executed criminal” dummy hanging from a tree and a tombstone on the lawn. Orange pumpkin heads and black cats wave from the back of minivans. The nurse at the E.R. may be dressed as a vampire when you stagger in bleeding. This holiday has definitively and finally been stolen back from the kids.
Here’s our problem in America. We don’t want to grow up. We want to drive a Tonka truck to work, eat cookie dough with our hands, continue having “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” well into our seventies, and eat sugary breakfast cereals with milk. Because we’re rich we can do it.
So this October 31, we’ll celebrate the Day of our Dead, our All Hallows Eve, Pandemonium, or any of its many names by saying “boo” to each other at the office and heading off to parties, where we’ll wash candy corn down with beer and play a little grabass with the other kids.
Later at night, when we’re clutching the toilet and heaving up a mess of Tootsie Rolls and Jagermeister, we might even feel the cold breath of the guest we forgot was there the whole time.
October 9th, 2003 at 1:19 am
I think Halloween for me was special more for a mood than anything else; that kind of crisp Fall air combined with the notion that it was the closest thing there was to being an acknowledgement of the supernatural. I think I also love it because I truly would love to believe in ghosts and returns from the grave ( or is that Easter?). I agree that Halloween has been co-opted and yuppized, but there is still an almost tangibe atmosphere to it that I only experience this time of year. So do I not want to grow up. Christ , no im 47!!!
October 9th, 2003 at 1:26 am
I still, like you, enjoy the crisp air and the harvest foods and the spookiness. I just don’t like the Tonka crowd beering it up.
October 9th, 2003 at 1:37 am
I agree with you about the flight from adulthood — for 364 days of the year. But why pick on Halloween? It’s supposed to be the exception to the rule.
Other cultures have their wacky dress-up carnival times, this is filling a much-needed gap in ours.
October 9th, 2003 at 2:04 am
I think I picked on Halloween because the adults are stealing it from the kids. One thing that bugs me a lot about this cultural infantilism is that children aren’t given the center stage they need to actually be kids; the grownups like to steal their toys.
October 9th, 2003 at 5:52 am
big chain retailers are calling the holiday “Friday October 31″ to avoid offending the people who want prayer and pumpkins but no devils.
Wacky. I live in the middle of the bible belt and it’s All Halloween All The Time here. First I’ve heard of a “harvest party” too, come to think of it.
October 9th, 2003 at 9:10 am
http://www.viceland.com/issues_uk/v10n2/htdocs/juvenile_hell.php
i think i just like this article for the line, “It’s called ‘Cyclical Maladaptive Patterns,’ bitch.”
but the “Littles” is what you’re talking about here…
October 9th, 2003 at 9:16 am
I agree with you about it. I mean, I like Halloween, and I talk about dressing up every year, and going to a party, but I never do. I really just sit around and smell the air and think about how much fun it was to wander around and come home with a pillowcase full of illicit candy. Growing up in Edmonton meant that you generally had to wear a large parka over or under any costume you wore, so it was quite a challenge for people at houses to divine what you were at times, since everyone looked sort of like a variation on the Michelin Man. I also like to remember how we used to try to push the “how old do we have to be before the adults stop letting us get away with this” limits. And the fear of getting nothing but dental floss from the dentist’s house.
I find it sad and frustrating that kids will not really experience that anymore, except on a very limited basis within “scare aware” sorts of neighbourhoods, with walking beat cops of parents wandering around everywhere. A lot of schools have big parties for kids to go to where they’re safe, but I’m not sure. Perhaps it just seems oppressive to me because I have experienced something else.
I think Halloween needs to be reclaimed by kids, and the old habit of Costume Parties for adults, like maybe at New Years’, needs to be reinstated. Then you’d have a chance to re-use your kangaroo suit. =)
October 10th, 2003 at 12:18 am
I’m with stimps on this one. Halloween’s been killed for kids because of the danger associated with it (creepy people who do Bad Things to candy, general out on the street after dark crap), the attempts to take away that danger, and the co-opting by so-called “adults”. If the days of Fancy Dress parties and Costume Balls and Other Reasons To Look Different From Every Fucking Day were still around, the old ones wouldn’t have to go nuts about this single day.
Personally, though, I was never really big on Halloween. And once you already don’t care, you start to hate it when you get a bunch of “Oh man, that’s the grossest costume EVER!” every year when you don’t dress up.
October 11th, 2003 at 1:27 pm
mmm…Candy corn and caramel apples. Come to Finland where the witches come out on Easter and there isn’t really a Halloween except at Karkki Pussi, the candy shop, where the ghosts go “Hu-Huuu!” and the pumpkins go “Pöö!” :)
October 16th, 2003 at 12:48 pm
Better plan all day
Better plan all week
Better plan all month
Better plan all year –JELLO!
:>