My three year old son has had a fierce preference for orange since he first learned his color words. He wears mainly orange clothes and eats orange foods. Unfortunately, Cheetos, rather than sweet potatoes are his favorite - but rarely indulged - orange fix. (He does do carrots and cantaloupe, though, on a regular basis.)
So, perhaps it was inevitable that he would choose Halloween as his favorite holiday. For nearly a year - since last Halloween, really - he's been anticipating the costumes, the pumpkins, and the candy. Especially, the candy corn.
Apparently, he's not alone. Halloween, as just about every parent knows, is HUGE! According to the National Retail Federation, overall spending on Halloween this year is expected to reach $4.75 billion. (Per capita consumer spending, though, is expected to be down dramatically from last year because of the recession.) And the Census Bureau estimated last year that 36 million American kids, between the ages of 5 and 13, go trick-or-treating. Many other older and younger kids (plus their parents) go trick-or-treating too, bringing the numbers up even more.
Now, I'm no Halloween Scrooge. I enjoyed dressing up, trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, and watching It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown when I was a kid. (I always pitied and admired Linus' persistent belief in the Great Pumpkin's imminent arrival.)
But the holiday's ever-expanding scope is, frankly, frightening.
Now, there are life-sized yard decorations and elaborate costumes, including ones for pets. In addition to a costume party or two, there are haunted train rides, enchanted forests, pumpkin treasure hunts, goblin gallops, scarecrow making workshops, and skeleton spectacles. Plus, there's lots of eco-unfriendly Halloween-themed junk, uh, merchandise.
While some of the kids' activities undoubtedly are fun, the Halloween hoopla seems a little much for this busy working mom. Part of the problem might be that Halloween comes at a particularly inconvenient time of the year. My daughter's birthday - a major celebration in our small world - is the week before Halloween. And I usually attend an overseas meeting just beforehand, so we're already overloaded by the end of October. This year is particularly crazy because I have two major work projects due in December - only five weeks away! But even if Halloween fell during a quieter time (if such a period exists), I'd still be spooked by the amount of time, money, and energy Halloween now consumes.
Our family is not immune. So far, I've procured the desired costumes - the boy, a pirate, the girl, a mermaid- but I still need to hem the pirate's pants and find the mermaid some sparkly blue tights. (Except for alterations, I, like my CurrentMom colleague, Lyn, am not sewing for Halloween.) We've visited our local seasonal Halloween emporium and draped the outside of our house with spooky faux cobwebs we purchased there. We've hung skeletons and ghouls all around, and picked no less than seven pumpkins. (And my husband suggested this morning that we need an even bigger one for our jack o' lantern.) I've even looked up Martha Stewart's recipes for creepy treats. (Of course, I haven't made any of them yet!)
This week, I'm consulting on our trick-or-treat route and working on scoring a pound of black licorice strings for a school-based edible spider project. (Eeek!) I skipped work Monday morning to accompany my son and his class to a "pumpkin playground" miles away from his school and our house. Tonight, I need to get his costume ready for a performance of The Not-So-Spooky Halloween Show. And on Friday, I plan to telework from home in the morning so I can view the Halloween parade at my daughter's school and claim my coveted volunteer slot at the post-parade after-party. ( Hopefully, my husband will staff the conflicting parade at my son's school downtown.) I'm glad that I can take part in these activities but I'll be putting in time during some very dark hours to compensate for my part in the Halloween hubbub.
By the time we reach Pumpkin Day on Saturday, we'll probably all be pooped and my plentiful (not!) Halloween spirit will be sagging. Still, when I see my kids all costumed and hear my son's delighted screams, I know I'll enjoy the Halloween frenzy.
Photo courtesy of cohdra on morguefile.com.
Halloween has always been a big boost in retail sales. The holiday comes in second to Christmas shopping.
Posted by: Stephanie | Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 02:26 PM
I feel your pain. Halloween has turned this mommy into a witch of grand proportions. I am happy to find another Halloween scrooge, or the Boo Humbug if you may.
Friday is my deadline for work, and somehow I volunteered to organize the mummy toilet wrap game at school. Now I am wondering why school spends half a day on the parade and the party.
Isn't it enough that the kids run amok on Saturday night for the real thing? Plus there are a series of parties and parades in our neighborhood, all involving numerous levels of costuming and preparation. Meanwhile, an outing tonight to CVS resulted in a huge haul of candy ... a large amount of which has been consumed by my seven year old boy twins, who then acted like demons on drugs and have only now gone to sleep. I am typing in the dark ... ready to scream like a witch at them if anyone ever murmurs again ...
Posted by: julie power | Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:59 PM
I'm amazed at what Halloween has become. When my kids were small, in a suburb of Paris, we celebrated Halloween with the other American family in the village. The neighbors' kids were always envious. Now their kids have "Alowine," described by Peter Mayle in a NYT op-ed last Sunday. Sweden has adopted Halloween, too. This seems like a shame because Swedes used to celebrate All Hallows' Eve, when tradition had people returning to hometowns to place candles on the graves of ancestors the evening before November 1, All Saints Day ... so very different from the commercial enterprise you describe here.
Posted by: Alexandra | Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 09:58 AM
I'm sure it's partly just an artifact of commercialization - where there's a buck to be made..
But I also wonder if it's partly that Halloween is (with a few exceptions) a holiday that everyone can participate in. That is, it's not tied to a particular faith tradition (setting aside its origins) and so schools and neighborhoods can (generally) set up Halloween activities without fear of excluding people. (Did I qualify that sentence enough?)
My kid is only 16-months and has never tasted candy, so we can still keep things pretty low-key. Thank goodness.
Plus, he refused to wear the costume I got him for the one party we went to. Luckily, I know this kid, had thought he might do that, and also got him some glow-skeleton pajamas that I put on him instead. Win! We'll try that costume again next year (it's sized 2-4, so hopefully it will still fit.)
Posted by: Lyn | Friday, October 30, 2009 at 10:51 AM