by Florian Zandt,
Oct 30, 2024
After hitting a record high in 2023, U.S. consumer spending for Halloween items like candy, decorations and costumes is expected to drop by $600 million to $11.6 billion, according to data from the industry group National Retail Federation (NRF). Despite the decrease, this still marks the second-highest expected spending in the past decade. While the coronavirus pandemic was responsible for the most recent drop before the 2024 Halloween season, growth had been stagnant before the novel virus' impact on public and social life around the world.
For example, after consumer spending increased by $2.2 billion between 2015 and 2017, 2018 and 2019 saw drops of $100 million and $200 million, respectively, compared to the previous year. So while the implementation of social distancing rules was certainly one cause for the drop of $800 million or ten percent in comparison with 2019, the industry had been bracing for decline for some time before the pandemic.
Zooming in on what U.S. residents are spending their money on shows most will go towards costumes and decorations. Additional NRF data indicates that overall consumers in the United States will allocate $3.8 billion each in both categories, with candy coming in second at $3.5 billion. The greeting card industry, however, will hardly profit from Halloween, with approximately $500 million spent on this specific type of Halloween item.
You will find more infographics at Statistaby Katharina Buchholz,
Oct 28, 2024
Trick-or-treating has been associated with Halloween celebrations in the U.S. and Canada since the early 1900s, but traditions of children going door to door in a quest for treats exist in many parts of the world, with one European custom being widely recognized as the precursor of the North American tradition.
As far back as the Middle Ages, people in the British Isles dressed up for holidays and went from door to door performing scenes in order to receive a thank-you in the form of food and drink. The tradition is preserved today in Scotland and Ireland under the name guising and features dressed-up children rather than theater displays. The origin of Halloween, celebrated on October 31, also goes back to Celtic traditions, more specifically the Samhain festival, which marked the beginning of winter and a time when fairies and spirits needed to be appeased. Like many Christian holidays, All Saints' Day (November 1) and its eve, All Hallows' Day, coincide with the pagan festival and trick-or-treating is done in Portugal on the first day of November. All Saints' Day also has a big significance in Mexico (celebrated as Day of the Dead there) but U.S. Halloween traditions have also been adopted, most heavily in the Northern and Central parts of the country, where the custom is named calaverita (litte skull) after the sugar skulls which are gifted for the festival.
But scary dress and trick-or-treating antics are not tied to a single date: Scandinavian children engage in them around Easter, while those in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark pick New Year's Eve. In Southern Germany, Austria Switzerland, the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium, treats are given out not for threats, but for songs, which children perform on November 11 (St. Martin's Day). Caroling for sweets is also performed during Ramadan in Central Asia. This is where trick-or-treating blends into Christmas caroling, which is sometimes also rewarded with food offerings, for example in Eastern Europe. The practice is associated most closely with England and the United States, but involves adults as well as children and more commonly the collection of money, for example for charity.
You will find more infographics at Statista
People around here are spending all kinds of money on tacky , garish, ugly Halloween yard decorations. But hey, you gotta do you. But gonna scream if I see one more ten foot plastic skeleton or one more hanged corpse from somebody's yard light. I saw one FB meme that was kind of funny. "Plastic is bad for the environment. With a little more prep work you could have a real skeleton instead of a fake one."
ReplyDeleteMy husband bought a bag of mini candy bars a couple of weeks back for trick or treat. Mainly his treat, the good ones are gone now (well, I helped a little). We don't have too many trick or treaters on our block. Especially since I'm going to leave the porch light off and go to the All Saints vigil Mass tonight.
Our grandchildren don't live in our town so I usually send them a card with a little cash in lieu of candy. Reminds me that I spaced off sending the cards so going to be a little late this year.
The Boy comes for Halloween to help hand out candy and watch "Beetlejuice." His b.d. is close to Christmas, so we always had big Halloween parties when he was little, and it stuck as our major family holiday. He likes to work Thanksgiving and Christmas thru New Year for the overtime. It also also creates goodwill with workers who have families and want the days off.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, we will visit graves and say prayers Nov 1 and 2.
This year I spent:
$6.99 on a big discount bag of mini Twix
$5.00 on a couple dozen of those eyeball bouncey-balls for kids who prefer toys or have allergies (the cats love leftovers)
$8.00 for three 4H pumpkins
I like seeing the neighbor kids and their parents, and I hope I never become the crabby old bat who sits upstairs with the lights off.
I may have mentioned before: we hardly get any trick-or-treaters. We had a streak of at least five years running with none at all, but last year (I think it was) a couple of bedraggled teens showed up. Not that the kids around our neighborhood are slacking: they'll be scrambling around the neighborhood later this afternoon in their costumes (always accompanied by at least one adult, even those in the older elementary school grades - that's a change from when we were kids), but for whatever reason they don't venture down our block.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, I'm a devotee of your husband's practice. I nabbed a bag of treat-size Snickers and one of Baby Ruths a couple of weeks back. The Baby Ruths (which I've decided is an underrated candy bar) are nearly gone now, and the Snickers bag has a serious dent in it. We also have a couple of bags of mixed variety, in case trick or treaters decide to favor us with their presence this year. I've been working through those (at least until the Baby Ruth feeding frenzy interrupted it), leaving behind the Twizzlers, the appeal of which I've never understood. Any kids that show up today get Twizzlers.
I hide the Halloween candy until trick or treat time to prevent snacking. We live in side the village limits, and people from the country bring their kids in on golf carts from the country. People in town drag the kids around in wagons, usually with a six-pack for the parents. Often they bring the family dog dressed up on a leash.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, with all the anger and agony in the run up to election day, I NEED one evening where people are just happy to be out with their kids and happy to chat for a minute.
For the last few years, I’ve gotten no visitors. I always get a bag of candy just in case and end up eating the whole thing. That’s why I don’t keep it around the house. My name is Stanley P. Kopacz and I am a chocoholic.
ReplyDeleteStanley, I can only take the candy glut once per year. Otherwise I'd be perfectly spherical.
DeleteReese’s peanut butter cups. Mmmm. Almost halfway through the designated trick or treat time and no one yet. More for me. More for me.
DeleteIn the last few years, our parish started doing an activity on the Saturday afternoon before Halloween called Trunk or Treat. Had not previously heard of it, but seems it's a thing now. The idea is, adults clean out the trunks of their cars, decorate the trunks in some sort of Halloween theme, put a couple of bags or buckets of candy in the trunk, and park in the parking lot, in a row or a circle, with the trunk popped open. The kiddies come in their Halloween costumes and 'trick or treat' from one car trunk to the next.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's elementary school did the same thing earlier this week.
I think it's interesting insofar as it's ways for communities of humans that are sort of semi-geographically-bound (a local parish, a local public school) to provide the local communal experience of trick-or-treating.
When I lived in the city of Chicago, I lived in neighborhoods that were almost entirely apartment and condominium dwellers. High-rises and low-rises. There were kids in those neighborhoods, but I never saw any kids walking around outside trick-or-treating on Halloween. Nor did any kid ever knock on my apartment door asking for candy. If they did trick-or-treating, presumably it was at school or some similar assembling-place. Or they were driven to neighborhoods that are primarily single-family dwellings.
One of our former associate pastors questioned why our parish would do Trunk or Treat. His view is, let's do something with the kids to celebrate All Saints Day. I don't think he's wrong.
Another mom and I were assigned to Do the All Saints party for the kids at The Boy's Catholic school. We had fun. Kids dressed up as saints and we had to guess which ones. We had game stations--St Patrick's snake toss, St Joseph build a tower--kids got saint stickers and candy at each station. The Episcopalians had an All Saints service where the kids dressed up as saints and processed with the priest.
DeleteTrunk or treat has been around for decades in fundie circles as a way to discourage devil worship (kids can't come dressed as wizards, witches, devils, ghosts, etc) and make sure the nobody gets razor blades and LSD in their candy from the secular humanists. Big with my Baptist in-laws who bought into the Satanic Panic.
We used to do some All Saints costumes at school when I was a kid. I could be Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha (now she's saint). I wore my hair in long braids and wore a squaw dress ( they really did call them that in the 50s, they were just bright colored dresses with a gathered skirt and a lot of braid or rick rack trim) Just stuck a feather in a headband and the costume was complete. Several years later my younger sister also was St. Kateri. She also had long braids and our grandma made her a faux buckskin dress. I remember helping my brother, whose name is Martin, make a soldier's shield out of cardboard and aluminum foil, for a Martin of Tours costume.
DeleteFor me, it was Superman, Davey Crockett, cowboy stuff. I wasn’t into the supernatural evil stuff. Well, I guess the toy guns were bad. Most guys my age were no longer enamored with guns when they attained draftability.
DeleteOh,boy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. My brother and twin cousins all had coonskin caps. There's a great podcast about that on Slate: https://slate.com/podcasts/one-year/s5/1955/e2/davy-crockett-craze-1955-walt-disney-television-movies-disneyland
DeleteOur funniest Halloween picture wad the one of my two brothers in Heckle and Jeckyl masks. (If you didn't watch cartoons, Heckle and Jeckle were crows)
DeleteWeren't they magpies? Or was that some other duo?
DeleteI looked it up, you were right about them being magpies. But they looked more like crows. Magpies have some white markings and a smaller beak.
DeleteAcross the street from our family home back in Pennsylvania, the lady decorated her home for each holiday. The day after Halloween the Thanksgiving decorations would go up; the day after Thanksgiving the Christmas decorations would go up; the day after Christmas the New Year's decorations would go up; the day after New Years, the Groundhog decorations; the day after Groundhog, the Valentines decorations; the day after Valentines, the Saint Patrick decorations; the day after Saint Patrick, the Easter Decorations, etc. Always on time like clockwork.
ReplyDeleteHere in suburbia we have residents who go all-in (not to say over-the-top) on outdoor holiday decorations - but not that level of commitment!
DeleteI love Christmas lights, I'm always glad when people leave them up a little longer!
DeleteExciting news: we've had three trick-or-treaters already today. I gave them Twizzlers. So it's a good Halloween. And still 2+ hours to go before the village-decreed end of trick-or-treat hours.
ReplyDeleteWe ended up with six, which for us is a banner Halloween. Two groups of tweens. No parents along, but they were still passably polite and good sports. I think one guy was a taco, but it was too chilly here for me to keep the door open and inquire. Plus, once they had their candy, they immediately lost interest in my existence.
DeleteSlow start tonight, but picked up. I have two day-glo balls and five candy bars left. The teensy finger puppets were a hit with tweener girls.
ReplyDeleteThe fire truck ran the siren for the end of trick-or-treat at 7:30 and the kids have all gone to the VFW hall where the local cop will inspect candy and judge costumes.
It was a nice evening to sit on the porch. 60 degrees and breezy.
Nobody talked about the election.
I think you're right that it takes people's mind off of election stress a bit. A chance for people to get out and have a little fun.
DeleteOur area of suburbia is not friendly to foot traffic. It is semi-rural, large lots with a lot of trees and even more forest between rows of lots. I live at the intersection of two roads, one a well-traveled state route, the other a well-maintained local township road.
ReplyDeleteHouses are set back 50 ft from the road. There is also a thirty-foot utility easement from the center of roads. That consists of grass, but there are not sidewalks of any kind. Immediately behind the 30ft line I have large forsythia and burning buses which shield my house from view except for the driveway. The only path to my house is the driveway.
I rarely cross the State Route, so I don't know the people on the other side. I have a lot of interaction with the couple who lives across the street on the township road. Their driveway comes down to my driveway. Anyone pulling into either driveway would immediately recognize that people on the other side of the road could be watching them.
I don't know the people who live down the township road because they are down-hill a fair distance from me and I rarely go to that end of my property. My back porch sits fairly high up and a long distance from the township road which bends inward toward my property which is a grassy stretch lined by evergreens. Since the house is single story and small it gives the appearance of a rural cottage.
Betty loved Halloween when she owned a two large story vintage house on a street in Painesville with sidewalks, etc. and knew the people in the neighborhood. Betty has a very limited diet that does prohibits sweets. I like ice cream and a few cookies but not candy. And, of course, the pandemic has been hostile to hosting people. So, no Halloween expenses here.
Comments on our village community page about some kid trick or treating in a KKK hood with swastika on the back. Most people were disgusted, but the usual combative minority on there yammering about offended snowflake crybabies trying to take away free speech. Same yahoos who go to school board screaming about that kid's book with gay penguins.
ReplyDeleteSo much for a 24-hour respite from politic ...