When I was 5 years old, I wore a Halloween costume made of toilet paper. I’m not kidding. We weren’t poor. It just made sense. I wanted to be the Mummy and we only had so many rags in the house. So, my mother supplemented the rags, held together by safety pins, with toilet paper, which we had plenty of. She wrapped my arms and legs and torso and head in it.
And off to school I went.
And yes, I said school, because back then, kids wore their costumes to school, and at lunchtime, they had a little parade around the neighborhood. Just a couple blocks. And parents came out to watch. And it all would have been fine …
Had it not started raining.
Within minutes, I was a walking pile of goo. The kids made fun. I started crying. And when I saw my mother, I pointed a finger and yelled, in my high-pitched little voice: ”You ruined my life!”
You know what? She didn’t. It was no big deal. But today it would be. Today, my mother would have been skewered, not so much for the unforeseen mix of toilet tissue and rainwater, but because she hadn’t spent over $100 on my costume.
Which is what the average American now spends for Halloween. It’s actually $114.45, according to the National Retail Federation.
All told, Americans will shell out $13.1 billion on the holiday this year.
Thirteen billion?
The Spirit of money
When did Halloween become so huge? Moreover, when did it become as much adult as kid, with celebrities posting about costumes that cost thousands of dollars and nightclubs doing extravagant themed events? Studies show that over 70% of adults now celebrate Halloween versus just 50% in 2005. It feels like more people go all out for Oct. 31 than for New Year’s.
The big question is: why?
Well, I know one reason. Money. Most of the wind that blows American sails is because of someone sensing there’s money to be made.
Sure enough, in 1983, a guy named Joe Marver was running a women’s clothing store in San Francisco, when he saw that a neighboring costume shop was doing nice business around Halloween. The next year he opened a “pop-up” costume shop, which was followed by another and another, until he had 60 stores under the banner Spirit Halloween.
He then sold his business to Spencer Gifts, which took the idea even bigger. Today, there are over 1,500 Spirit Halloween locations across the country. Estimates for its annual revenue are over $1 billion.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s as American as Casper the Ghost. Guy gets idea. Makes money. Expands ideas. Makes more money.
But when you go to Spirit Halloween online and see the Persian bazaar of costumes for adults, from a sexy Pirate Wench to a naughty Rebellious Red Riding Hood, you do wonder if we’ve gone off the rails.
When we were younger, you knew Halloween was coming when a few masks and capes showed up in the department store. This happened in mid-October. Today, Spirit Halloween is online year-round, and retail stores begin offering elaborate costumes by Labor Day.
The candy section of grocery chains gets stocked as if we’re expecting Armageddon. Horror movies start spilling out of Hollywood studios. Sitcom TV shows do their Halloween-themed episodes. Retail outlets from car dealerships to appliance stores do their “Spooky Savings” or “Frighteningly Good Deals!” Radio stations play “The Monster Mash.”
And normally mature couples feel compelled to go to parties dressed as Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce because …
Well, because …?
Because?
Some questionable Halloween decisions
Because it’s fun, you say. OK. But is it? At the handful of adult Halloween things I’ve attended, people dressed as a Marvel superhero or Donald Trump or an Emoji, all stand around talking about the same stuff they always talk about. Business. Gossip. Sports. Their kids.
They don’t try to fly, like I did when I got a Superman cape as a child. That’s because dress-up for kids is about imagination, while dress-up for adults is about imitation. Or obligation. Or intimidation. You don’t want to be the fuddy-duddy who says, “This is stupid.”
I don’t want to be, either. Halloween excess isn’t hurting anyone. On the other hand, it’s not helping anyone, either. I do wonder if we canceled the holiday for one year, and took the $13 billion we would have spent on it, how we could pay the annual budget of Wyoming, Arkansas, North Dakota, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, Delaware or Alaska, all of which spend less per year on their state than we spend for one day of trick or treat.
I miss the days when a kid’s costume choice was princess, cowboy or Batman. I miss the days when if you covered the bottom of your paper bag, you thought you had a lot of candy, instead of lugging in pillowcase after pillowcase as if you’re mining rocks for gold.
I miss when parents didn’t drive their kids to the most fruitful neighborhoods for the biggest candy payload, and when you could open the door and say to a teenager who’d rubbed some charcoal under his eyes and called himself a hobo, “Aren’t you getting too old for this?”
Today there’s no too old. Only too cheap. Or too uncool. I’m kind of glad my mother isn’t around to see all this excess. I just found a Mummy costume on Walmart’s website.
It costs $97.98.
That’s a lot of toilet paper.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom on x.com.
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