What Halloween is Really About

By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience

posted: 26 October 2006 09:42 am ET

Christmas had better watch its back.

Halloween is creeping up on the December holiday in popularity and consumer spending, according to recent retail surveys. And the customs surrounding the ghoulish day are not just for little ones anymore.

Adult participation in Halloween is at an all-time high in the United States, with big kids dressing up as their favorite characters and partying into the wee hours like never before [Most Popular Costumes for 2006].

In an ironic twist, however, while more adults are getting into the act this year, some U.S. schools are putting the kibosh on Halloween celebrations altogether for the sake of political correctness.

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A little something for everyone

Americans will spend almost $5 billion on Halloween this year, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), a jump of more than a billion dollars over last year.

More grown-up participation in spooky festivities is a big contributor to the holiday's growth, experts say.

"Consumers see Halloween as a seasonal celebration to bridge the gap between the end of summer and the winter holidays," said Tracy Mullin, president and CEO of the NRF, in a company statement. "Halloween offers a little something for everyone and, this year, people of all ages will be joining in the fun."

Nearly 80 percent of 25-34 year-olds will dress up in costume, according to an NRF survey, which lists witches, pirates and vampires as its top adult get-ups for 2006. The holiday is the only time during the year that grown-ups can really let loose, act silly and get away with it, say retailers, who've had to adjust to the demand for outfits in much larger sizes and racier cuts. One shop owner in Charlotte, North Carolina, boosted his order of sexy nurse and secretary costumes to $3.5 million this year, up from $250,000 just five years ago, he told The Charlotte Observer.

Offending witches

Many U.S. schoolchildren, however, are being told to leave their pirate patches and witch hats at home.

A Washington state school board that made headlines two years ago for canceling all daytime Halloween activities will continue its ban this year, board officials confirmed recently. One of its official reasons in 2004 was religious sensitivity to wiccans, modern-day witches who district administrators claimed could be offended by the stereotypical black hats and broomsticks.

An odd statement, perhaps, but other school districts across the country are now following its politically correct lead, reasoning that not all students—especially in schools with a diverse religious make-up—celebrate the holiday. Several schools in Illinois' Indian Prairie School District banned costumes because some students were uncomfortable and were staying home on Halloween, a representative told The Chicago Sun-Times.

Offending Christians

A few schools, including one in Colorado and one in Massachussetts, are bowing to pressure from parents who say the holiday, with its pagan roots and ancient customs, goes against Christian teachings.

That's a tough argument to make, said Danny L. Jorgensen, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida.

"Halloween probably is a leftover from the pre-Christian past," Jorgensen told LiveScience, "however, it is not the same as the original pagan holiday—whatever that may have been."

Any associations the holiday may have had with real witchcraft were long gone by the time the holiday came to America in the 1840s with Irish immigrants, who were mostly Catholic. Their annual custom of getting dressed up in ghoulish costumes came from the Celts, who believed long-dead spirits returned to the earth on Oct. 31, their New Year's Eve. Morphed by a 9th-century pope, All-Hallows' Eve became a day for the Christian world to honor saints and martyrs.

That makes today's version of Halloween, if it can be considered a religious holiday at all, as much Christian as it is pagan, Jorgensen said. "Halloween, almost by definition, was appropriated by Christian cultures—void of its sacred significance—as some sort of special event, if not a religious one."

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