By John F. Doherty, Public Discourse. (Photo: David Menidrey/Unsplash)
The burgeoning interest in Halloween, and in openly displaying “the dark side” of the supernatural, suggests that many hearts, impatient with the sentimentality of non-religious holidays, might want to return to religion—but not of the biblical kind.
The holiday season is in full swing. I don’t mean Christmas; that won’t begin until November starts (although it used to begin after Thanksgiving). I mean the Halloween season, which started sometime after Labor Day.
I recognize its arrival when Home Depot starts selling Halloween decorations. These get more elaborate and grotesque each year: animated Chucky dolls (I hesitate to link to the scarface version); the best-selling twelve-foot-high skeletons (listed under the innocent heading “Home Accents Holiday”); or the macabre offerings in Gruesome Grounds. Not long after these mannequins appear in stores, they appear on many front lawns, more than a month in advance of Halloween—the day’s “Advent” period, you might say. For weeks I walk or drive by yards that are not simply tacky, like overdone Christmas decorations, but disturbing.
Every generation of adults tends to exaggerate the differences between the present and their childhood, but I believe something has changed in my lifetime. Seeing Halloween decorations on lawns in September, or even the first half of October, was not a thing thirty or even twenty years ago. Decorations were certainly not as elaborate as these. My father said that, in the 1950s and ’60s of his youth, Halloween was an entirely “homemade” holiday. Decorations were little more than a few kitchen-carved jack-o’-lanterns. For a costume, take a white sheet and cut three holes for the eyes and mouth, and you could be a ghost; give a girl a blue jumper, a basket, and red shoes, and she could be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. But in 2025, Americans are expected to spend $13.1 billion (about $115 per reveler) on this once-minor holiday, between candy, store-bought costumes, parties, that ghastly decor, and even greeting cards.