The Horror, the Horror: Halloween has grown into a big deal — too big

National Review, Nov 10, 2003 by Meghan Cox Gurdon

"Halloween candy?!" I exclaim, not quite taking in what I am seeing.

"Candy!" cries Violet, who's three.

"Andy!" echoes Phoebe, who's two.

"Can you believe it, Mummy?" Molly says scornfully, gesturing at a stack of orange spheres further down the aisle. "Jack-o'-lanterns in August!"

When a nine-year-old can see through the phoniness of pushing late- October goods in the heat of summer, it must be phony indeed. We rattle disdainfully past the mounds of cheap Halloween candy, all of which, I am sure, has been gathering dust on warehouse pallets for the last ten months.

I blame the Irish. The heathen Celts celebrated Samhain, Lord of Darkness, in late autumn. That festival was co-opted by Christianity and became All Hallow's Eve, the night before All Saint's Day, which it remains. Irish immigrants introduced trick-or-treating to America -- it derives from an old peasant practice -- and Ireland brought us the tale of Jack-o'-the-Lantern, a shiftless Paddy condemned eternally to walk the earth with only a hollowed-out turnip to light his way (it became a pumpkin after large numbers of Jack's people landed at Ellis Island). October 31 was for hundreds of years a time to remember the loved and sainted dead, but has long since degenerated into the confused revelry we know today.

At school, I whip 'round the mothers to ask why they celebrate Halloween. "It's a Hallmark-created holiday," laughs Allison, who likes the tradition but limits her boys' costumes to the non-funereal. "But c'mon, it's fun for the kids."

"I don't like the dark, witchy undercurrents of Halloween," says Melissa, "but when else do you see high-and-mighty people in clown wigs?"

"I don't know what it means. We don't do it in Brazil," says Kareen, who doesn't do it here, either.

Apart from Wiccans, who have their own lavender-tinged, Celt-promoting agenda, it's hard to find anyone who knows why Americans now celebrate Halloween with such vigor. Yet you see middle-class women rummaging furiously through piles of made-in-China lion suits at $12.99 apiece to find the right size for their 18-month-olds. Step into a fabric store, and you will see mothers taking down bolts of cloth suitable for their little Grim Reapers, Gypsies, and Draculas. When they zip those costumes over their children and march out into the night, what do they think they're doing?

Don't get me wrong. Americans should be free to buy what they want, even inflatable skeletons and glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. I also think that adults should have more fancy-dress parties, not fewer, especially elegant ones.

But there are two utterly creepy things about Halloween, quite apart from its glamorization of demons and axe-murderers. The first is that it's a trumped-up festival of nothingness -- as if our attention spans were so short that we needed a strange, cheap thrill between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. The second is that for nearly a month every year, Halloween infantilizes the entire country. Giggly pleasure in dress-ups and sweets is fetching in children. But when it overwhelms a great portion of the autumn, and otherwise grown-up people enter into the supposed "spirit" without having any idea why they do so, then it becomes a piece of sustained and irritating whimsy.