The retail cycle always is out in front of the regular calendar so the Halloween shopping season is upon us. Of course, once Halloween passes, it’s full bore into the Christmas shopping cycle that now lasts almost as long as presidential election campaigns.
People, both kids and adults, love Halloween because it’s the one day you can be someone else. Then again, if you’re totally enamored with yourself, this may not be such a big deal.
The rest of us make Halloween a really big deal. Total consumer spending on Halloween is expected to be $8.4 billion this year. The Halloween home decorating business is second only to Christmas.
The Halloween costumes that are trending this year are mermaids, princesses, super heroes, villains, zombies, the Harry Potter cast and, naturally, ghosts.
It’s uplifting to hear that the fun is back in Halloween for there was a time a few years ago when it seemed more steeped in violence, resonating with the dark side of Americans. Cash registers were ringing and retailers were howling in delight over selling an inordinate number of corpses, severed limps and butchered body parts.
It was downright spooky to see Halloween morph into Harrorween, hardly a benign celebration of witches and goblins. Some cited the slasher movies of the 1970s, specifically the 1978 horror flick Halloween, for the evolution of horror in Halloween.
It was as if they tore up the old assembly manual on Halloween and distributed a bloody new one. Fright is a torsion spring-loaded device that was being wound ever tighter by merchandisers who laid the gore on so thick it made shrieks and screams leap from one throat to the next.
Thank heavens that everything in life, outside of elevators, is cyclical and Halloween no longer is perched entirely on the butcher block.
Granted, there always be some gore in Halloween but it is refreshing that it has toggled back to the days when it was not just about the maimed.