Americans Love to Hate to Love Halloween

Projected percentage, 2012
Courtesy: betweenthenumbers.net

In the United States, Halloween ranks as the third most popular holiday, and the second-biggest decorating holiday, topped only by Christmas. For more than 15 years now, the American retail industry, amplified by our media, have treated us to an annual informational on the family-fun fueled growth of Halloween consumerism. But Halloween, historically speaking, is a celebration of death. Anxiety, discomfort, fear, help fuel the party. Any observer of American culture, particularly our pathological aversion to the inevitability of aging - and dying, must needs find the increasingly outrageous pageantry of Halloween a bit bizarre - or even, as one British journalist put it, "tacky." In truth, for many Americans, Halloween is a holiday that we love, and love to hate.

Spooky Numbers

Like any good Halloween tale, the first blush of headlines proclaim that all is well in the village. Or as one Halloween retailer un-selfconsciously promised, "We want to be bright and sunshiny. We want music to be playing and a happy feel."

According to the National Retail Federation's July 2014 survey, almost 75% of American households, more than 170 million adults, planned to participate in some manner of Halloween celebration. Most commonly handing out candy, and for parents, taking the kids trick-or-treating; but, increasingly U.S. adults are also decorating their homes; wearing costumes, attending parties and visiting haunted house attractions.

Celebration Plans for Halloween - Estimated No. of Adults (Sept. 2014) - NRF

With Halloween falling on a Friday in 2014, retailers anticipate record spending. Estimates vary between $7.4 billion (NRF) and $11.3 billion (ICSC). Even at the lower projection, upward trends in U.S. Halloween spending are thrilling.

Based on NRF data, between 2005 and 2012, the country's overall Halloween spending has been increasing by 10.8% per year, and by 4.8% per person, per year. 

Courtesy: betweenthenumbers.net

Consumer economy triumphalism notwithstanding, Halloween is still a game. Trick-or-treat, hide-and-seek. What makes Halloween, or any game, fun is that not everyone is on the same team. At the end of our retailers' Halloween fable lies an interesting twist. A consistent minority of Americans have not been convinced to play.

In 2000, an American Express Retail Index survey found that nearly two-thirds of adults rate Halloween as popular in their home and that 82 percent will hand out treats. Bobbing for apples to apples comparisons, we can review 10 years of data from the NRF.

Percentage of Consumers Who Planned to Celebrate Halloween or Participate in Halloween Activities (BIGResearch / BIGInsight Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey)

• 68.5% - 2014 (estimated)
• 65.8% - 2013 
• 71.5% - 2012 
• 68.6% - 2011 
• 63.8% - 2010 
• 62.1% - 2009 
• 64.5% - 2008 
• 58.7% - 2007 
• 63.8% - 2006 
• 52.5% - 2005

Over the past decade, that's an average of 64% of adults participating in Halloween each year. Meaning more than 30% of the adult population are just not that into celebrating Halloween.

And there is the additional disparity between survey respondents who report enthusiasm for Halloween activities versus those who (dutifully?) hand out treats. NRF's 2014 survey captures the fact that, as in every year, a portion of respondents who will hand out candy (73.5%) do not in fact anticipate themselves to be "celebrating" Halloween (only 68.5%). Seemingly some adults well remember that trick-or-treat is, after all, a thinly veiled game of extortion.

Halloween is for Grinches

Halloween engenders ambivalence, by design. Despite the retail industry's best assurances. One example of our collective misgiving is the intuition that we are being (successfully) marketed. A Harris poll from four years ago found that the same consistent 66% of U.S. adults planned to celebrate Halloween; even as 51% of the survey respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that Halloween is an "over-hyped holiday."

Courtesy: PRNewswire, The Harris Poll, Oct. 2010

Religious objections to Halloween date back to America's founding Puritans; today Born-Agains and Evangelicals are most likely to rail against occult origins. Worry about the dangers to children, real and imagined, are easy enough to understand. Tainted candy, candle fires, abductions-mostly imagined; traffic accidents and sports injuries-real. And then there is the nagging suspicion that, "Only children should dress up for Halloween."

Halloween is a shape shifter. A beautiful young woman in the moonlight, revealed as wicked old hag by passing clouds. In an age when science has dispelled belief in monsters, Halloween engineers that we eye each other warily.

You are one of the 67% of American adults who believe that Halloween is not just for kids. Your neighbor is one of the 32% who feel that only children should dress for Halloween. Let the games, and noise complaints, begin. On a night when "the veil between life and death [is] at its thinnest and the living and the dead [can] co-mingle;" some will bar themselves indoors, while others will risk adventure in the dark.  And each group will wonder, "What is wrong with those people?" 

Trick-and-Treat 

"Halloween doesn't like to have it's energies tamed. The rebellious aspect is gonna pop up somewhere." Having possessed the American psyche, October 31st continues to make mischief by pitting us against one another in a contest to define Halloween.

Headlines tell the story:

• Let Halloween be About the Kids This Year - Detroit News
• Things to Stop Buying as You Get Older (hint: Halloween costumes) - U.S, News and World Report
• In Defense of Slut-O-Ween (summary: anything, and everything, goes) - Daily Beast

• What Can You Do With All That Halloween Candy? - Wired Magazine
• Eastchester H.S. backs off on Halloween cross-dressing ban - The Journal News
• Town Official: Halloween Back on as Manhunt Ends - ABC News

• The Purest Halloween Music Ever Written - The Atlantic
• Sexy Ebola Nurse & More of the Year’s Worst Halloween Costumes - Daily Beast
• Professor beheaded in what witnesses first thought was Halloween prank - Fox News

Call it "All Saints' Eve," or "Allhalloween" or "The Festival of Samhain;" but this night, 3000 years later, is celebrated by Americans because Halloween is grand enough to absorb the love-hate-love blow back of our still adolescent culture. Run through the streets ridiculing death in your most macabre outfit. Lock yourself inside, peering past the curtains for first sign of daybreak. In either case you are a perfect Hallowe'en participant, experiencing it in just the same way as generations before you.

Halloween Equals Quality

Halloween, has become one of Americans' favorite games because it’s fun to find new ways of hiding (This Halloween's Hottest Costume: Frozen's Elsa). And it's fun to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place (Islamic state Halloween costumes that might get you killed). In his book, The Culture Code, a french observer of American ways notes that, "The Culture Code for quality in America is IT WORKS." 

Halloween works for Americans. Which is more than we can say for the Centers for Disease Control (underestimated Ebola); the Central Intelligence Agency (missed the rise of ISIS) or our political system (any 2014 midterm election commercial). Love Halloween; that works. Hate Halloween; that works as well.

The same french observer opines that, "The Culture Code for perfection in America is DEATH." And so it is the permission to fear and mock death simultaneously - and to be right both ways - that makes Halloween the perfect American holiday.

References

1. Quotes by David J. Skall, Author, featured in the The Real Story of Halloween, History Channel documentary