Halloween's mutation: From humble holiday to retail monstrosity

On Nov 1, 1876, The New York Times declared Halloween "departed," destined for the grave.

In 2024, consumers are expected to spend $11.6 billion celebrating the holiday, up from $3.3 billion in 2005. Perhaps it is time to eat some crow.

Halloween, steeped in tradition, has transformed from a pagan feast to a celebration with lovingly homemade costumes and treats to one of the largest consumer spending holidays in the United States. Every October -- or earlier -- millions of Americans are spending on costumes, decorating their homes and lawns with garish skeletons and spiders, and doling out candy to little superheroes and witches. But how did this holiday with humble origins become an economic juggernaut with growing global appeal?

Halloween is a marketer's dream, said Tom Arnold, a finance professor and retail expert at the University of Richmond. It falls on the same day every year, Halloween items are largely consumable (candy needs to be replenished every year, and kids outgrow costumes), and pop culture trends can help predict which costumes will be the must-haves each season.

Arnold said the 1970s brought mass-manufactured costumes and individually wrapped candy that made the holiday explode in popularity. It also shifted from a more religious holiday to a secular one.

Even when consumers are worried about their finances, they'll still open their wallets for holidays like Halloween and Christmas, Arnold said, because "it creates a unique experience at a particular time of the year."

"Even during the pandemic, consumers went to great strides to preserve these two holidays," he said.

A holiday with Catholic and Celtic roots comes to America

Halloween is a combination of two holidays: All Saints' Day, which was a Catholic holiday that was moved to Nov. 1 to co-opt the other, Samhain, an old Celtic pagan holiday, said Lisa Morton, author of "Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween." In fact, the holiday's name is a shortened version of "All Hallows' Eve," with "hallow" meaning saint.

Samhain (pronounced saa-wn) was the New Year's festival for Irish Celtic tribes when they were entering their long, cold winter. They celebrated it with a three-day festival and scary stories, which is most likely the source of Halloween's macabre side.

Halloween made its way to the United States in the 1840s with Scottish and Irish immigrants who brought their favorite holidays with them as they fled from famine. Magazines, a nascent industry at the time, published stories about "quaint Irish and Scottish celebrations" that caught the attention of American mothers, who started hosting Halloween parties for their children.

Trick-or-treating came about as a way to distract children who, by 1900, had taken over the holiday. Kids played simple but mischievous pranks, like disassembling and then reassembling a farmer's buggy on a barn roof. However, as time passed and America began urbanizing, the pranks became "very destructive," Morton said. Communities needed a way to "buy off" gangs of feral children who were terrorizing neighbors by smashing light fixtures, setting tires on fire and tripping people on sidewalks.

Neighborhood "house-to-house parties" were held for kids, Morton said, noting that this origin of trick-or-treat also provided the basis for today's haunted attractions (think haunted houses and mazes) as people would set up "trails of terror" in their basements or at local parks. Haunted houses are now a seven-figure industry of their own.

Candy and costumes go commercial

When trick-or-treating became widespread, costuming also gained in popularity. Costumes had been a part of the fun dating back to the 19th century, Morton said, but they took off in the 1950s, when big retailers and costume stores got involved.

"If you're a kid, who wouldn't rather be Superman at Halloween than yet another thief made up from your dad's old clothes out of the attic?" she said.

Candy, the most popular spending category for the holiday today, took off in the '50s, too, Morton said, as the end of World War II meant sugar was back in stock.

According to the National Retail Federation's annual survey, 47% of consumers began shopping for Halloween before October, and 48% of those early shoppers said they had been motivated by their eagerness for autumn. Spending on candy is expected to reach $3.5 billion this year; spending on costumes and decorations is predicted to hit $3.8 billion each. Greeting cards (yes, people do give Halloween greeting cards) account for $500 million. Consumers are expected to spend an average of $103.63 per person this year.

Young adults join the party

Halloween spending has been rising for years, a trend that can be largely be attributed to millennial and Generation Z consumers who love the holiday, said Katherine Cullen, vice president of industry and consumer insights at the National Retail Federation.

"We're at a point where almost three-quarters of adults celebrate Halloween, which is really impactful," she said.

Contrary to popular belief, Halloween is not the second-largest retail holiday behind Christmas, Cullen said. Personal spending on gift-giving holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day and Valentine's Day outnumbers it, but it still falls in the top 10.

Spirit Halloween and big retailers move in

Spirit Halloween is not just a seasonal pop-up store that comes to town for a few months every year. It's retail entertainment.

"When you walk into a Spirit store, you are immersed into a Halloween space and you can see it, you can smell it, you can hear it, you can touch it, you can almost taste it," said Steven Silverstein, the company's CEO.

Stores begin rolling out on Aug. 1, he said, and consumers eagerly flock to their nearest locations "to be inspired by ideas, to interact with a lot of the props and the merchandise."

The company, which has become synonymous with the holiday, has benefited from Halloween's growing popularity, Silverstein said.

During his tenure of a little over 20 years, Spirit Halloween has grown from about 130 locations to more than 1,500 this year across the United States and Canada.

When he was growing up, the holiday was solely for children, and "by the time you got to be about 12 years old, that was the end of that." But with more Halloween parties for kids came more opportunities for parents to dress up, so the market for adult costumes grew. Then came the college students who found that the holiday gave them an excuse to party.

"Halloween today, much different than it was years ago, really appeals to virtually every demographic and every age," he said.

Home Depot's Halloween program began in 2013 and was "contained to a single endcap of our store aisles with around 40 'harvest' themed products," Lance Allen, senior merchant of decorative holiday at Home Depot, said. Now Home Depot offers consumers hundreds of products, including its famous 12-foot skeleton, "Skelly," which has sold out every year since its debut in 2020, Allen said. Online sales start in July, and stores have their Halloween displays up by Labor Day.

Can't wait for Halloween? Try 'Summerween'

Home Depot's foray into Halloween has been so successful that last year it started celebrating "Halfway to Halloween" with an online sale in April that featured Skelly and other spooky seasonal goods.

At the Michaels headquarters in Irving, Texas, near Dallas, preparations for next Halloween are underway, said Ashley Buchanan, the company's CEO.

Michaels began selling its Halloween merchandise on June 27 this year, two weeks earlier than ever, and "the reception was phenomenal," Buchanan said.

"There's just pent-up demand," he said.

Michaels and Home Depot are among retailers that have started previewing and selling frightful wares earlier and earlier -- a phenomenon called "holiday creep." There's now "Summerween," a pastel-hued and hot-weather-infused celebration for those who can't wait for October. Halloween superfans gleefully post on social media under #codeorange at the earliest signs of holiday shopping.

The modern, Americanized Halloween is spreading, gaining a foothold outside English-speaking countries, where it bends to local traditions, said Morton, the author. She pointed to Hong Kong, where a big amusement park creates Halloween mazes every year.

"One of the interesting things about Halloween is the way it continually morphs," Morton said. "We see it change almost from century to century."

She added: "I'm fascinated to see where it's going to go from here."