The Grand Illusion
Some eight years ago, I wrote a blog post about the swallowing of Thanksgiving by the commercialization of Christmas. From what I can see, at least here in Cedar City, Thanksgiving has almost vanished, and Christmas decorations are proliferating in early November, along with greater hype of special buying days like Black Friday, Black Monday, and cyber-whatever-the-hell-day it may be.
Now that the Christmas commercialists have vanquished Thanksgiving, which isn’t totally surprising, given that Thanksgiving is based on expressing thanks and gratitude for what one has rather than spending more and more on everything for longer and longer, those self-same Christmas commercialists appear to have taken aim at Halloween.
Or perhaps some other group has, and the Christmas commercialists are merely taking advantage of it.
We’ve lived in the same house for thirty-two years, and, on average, the number of trick-or-treaters has declined over this period. Part of that I attributed to the aging of the homeowners in our area, but for at least the last five years, more and more younger families with small children have been moving in, yet the numbers of trick-or-treating children have reached the point to where we had exactly two this year, leaving us with an inordinate amount of individually wrapped candy.
I’ve wondered if it was just a cultural peculiarity of our area, but I did an informal canvass of friends in Cedar City and of our offspring spread across the United States (if predominantly on the coasts), and they’ve all noticed the same phenomenon.
Now, possibly this diminution of Halloween decoration and trick-or-treating may also be the result of internet-created isolation, ICE-induced fear of public spaces, and growing public paranoia, or it just might be an outcome from internet-created laziness, because trick-or-treating requires costumes, parental supervision (at least for small children), and lots of walking, and candy can be ordered with a mouse click or iPhone tap and delivered to the door.
Whatever the reason, from what I can tell, there definitely is such diminution, no doubt to the delight of the accountants of the Christmas commercialists.
While not a trend, candy was really expensive this year. Given that, if I were a kid I would have been especially keen to go out and get me some. If an adult, maybe turn the lights out early.
Don’t be too early judging the Christmas season yet. Methinks tariffs this year just might put a ding in sales and/or supply of many items.
I’ve thought for a while now that the quintessential American Advent hymn is “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute”.
However, I read that Americans spend more money for Halloween than any other holiday other than Christmas. So I’m sure the commercialists will continue to try to milk it. Labor Day and the 4th of July should probably thank their lucky stars that Halloween is there to protect them from Christmas encroachment.
As much as Christmas commercialism aggravates me as well, I think some – a little, anyway – of this encroachment is from a more innocent reason.
I know I stopped Christmas-shopping in December ages ago, and moved back into November, to avoid overcrowded stores. If a fair percentage of Christmas shopping now takes place in October, I can’t *completely* blame the stores and advertisers for following suit.
I’ve been watching and it seems to me that there are a couple of things going on with Halloween. First for trick or treating, at least here, has migrated to more curated “trunk or treat” sorts of events. I feel driven by both a general dubiously founded fear of the world and a balkanization of society.
The second thing, Halloween seems to be aging up. Its becoming more of an adult holiday in some ways. More focus on displays and whatnot.
I haven’t had trick or treaters in 30 years. And there have been families on my road all that time. After 3 years of freezing most of the unused candy I quit buying it.
As we get more disconnected, maybe people think about the times they were more connected? Christmas seems to be that “let’s all get together and be together,” time, so maybe we’re all chasing that high/connection?
I fought hard to keep the tree from going up before Thanksgiving, but after 15 years I’ve lost the battle. I’m outnumbered, my wife and children outvoted me. My tree has been up for two weeks already. It’s lovely, but it’s still too early for me.
Twenty-five years ago I was working on the Navajo reservation. Every non-Navajo (and some Navajos) who worked in the hospital lived in a housing compound adjacent to the medical complex. Most of the Navajo lived in family compounds scattered several miles apart from each other. Every Halloween pick up trucks loaded with costumed kids from 30-50 miles around would descend upon the housing compound. It was the only place where the houses were close enough to walk from one to the other and the people living there could afford candy. It was a madhouse. The streets and sidewalks were jammed with kids and their parents and you would end up giving away 500-800 pieces of candy and they’d still be coming. It was a big social event for the parents as well.
Halloween heaven