Halloween: Growing Popularity Leads to Renarrating Histories You might have noticed that Halloween has grown in popularity in the last few decades. And big business. In 1965, treat and costume profits hit $300 million. Last year, it was $10 billion. 023 is expected, as this BBC articles shows, to be over $12 billion. I appreciated that the BBC analysis about 'why' included, "human beings love ritual". Haunted houses, no longer just for middle schoolers, have become a 7-figure thing... that corporations are increasingly investing in.
That's a lot of candy. And plastic cauldrons. And plastic altars.
This reminds me of the radio show Krissy and I did with our friend Carolyn Casey where we talked about how Halloween has become the creation of plastic altars on over-manicured lawns and private property. She, of course, asked the important question: what's wanting to be expressed/born/said in all this? Not just the critique of mass consumerism. After all, people are going to use what tools they can easily get ahold of to express themselves. I'm still musing on that one. Lots of possibilities.
What is clear is that as the popularity grows, so too does the proliferation of articles about 'where does Halloween come from'? From CNN to Country Living to Public Libraries, there are a lot of articles about the history. Sometimes they mention Samhain/Sawhain. And practices of mumming. Maybe somewhere a grad student is compiling a bunch of thoughts about what the different versions of history say about who is writing them.
I appreciated (this is all mainstream media):
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