When Halloween is TOO Much Halloween

The autumnal celebration has turned into the holiday for adults to get weird

On a recent drive through a neighborhood in Chicago’s western suburbs, I spotted in the distance a large black object on the edge of the roadway. As I moved closer, it became strangely clear. Looming large at the end of a home’s lawn near the driveway entrance, was a life-size, blow-up hearse. Black and long. Skeletons and ghosts waved from the windows. A 100-percent air-inflated funeral hearse.

Down the block from my home, two enormous plastic skeletons, standing at the property line, protecting a house infested by black spiders, three-foot-long hairy arachnids crawling on the siding.

Around the corner at a different home, another giant skeleton, easily twenty-feet high. This time sporting a pumpkin for a head and guarding a massive witch’s caldron nearly as big as the front lawn.

And it’s still September.

These are not the autumnal holiday decorations of children. These are adult creations. Purchased and assembled by adults. Do the kids love them? Surely some do. But some younger ones are probably more frightened than amused. Halloween is no longer driven by all those little kids dressed as Spiderman or Barbie or the Wicked Witch of the West or a scary ghost. The adults have taken over.

Not sure who first coined the phrase, but it is more relevant now than over.

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love Halloween, and adults.”

I attended one adult Halloween party in my life. I was in my 20s. My costume was that of a Confederate soldier. I had been recently hypnotized as part of a radio program I was involved with, and the practitioner took me to a past life. That alleged past life was that of a Confederate officer, leading a band of soldiers through Kentucky. I’m certain dressing like a Confederate officer for Halloween today would have negative reactions, as it probably should. But this was the early 1980s when most of us were tone-deaf. Whether you believe in past lives or not is not the point. What is the point is why has the adult Halloween experience become such a major thing?

Since that first costume, I have never been to an adult Halloween party, have never worn a Halloween costume, and never plan to. Ever. It’s just weird, something odd and off-putting about adults in costume, and quite strange that homeowners are spending entire weekends to decorate their houses with giant witches and skeletons and full-size, blow-up hearses.

One could simply say that it’s good to be a kid, no matter your age. One could say it’s about fun and whimsy. One could also say it’s driven by the effective marketing by the Targets and Walmarts of the world, and that adults are just too weak to hold off.

When I told my wife that I planned to write about the adult takeover of Halloween, she warned me not to sound like a crotchety old man. “You’re the guy who hates giving out candy,” she reminded me. Yes, it’s true. I used to be okay with it, the flow of cute kids coming to the door. And now with a granddaughter, my stand is likely to soften. But what turned things for me was when the parents who were accompanying their children for trick-or-treat were also dressed in costume.

Now, on Halloween, my wife and I go out to dinner and lock the door.

Sound like a crotchety old man? Yeah. Maybe. But it’s not about rejection of the essence of what the holiday is in America, it’s about the adult invasion of it. And for that you must allow me to be crotchety.

There are statistics that show that in 2005, just over half of American adults celebrated Halloween. Today, that number has grown to over 70 percent. Those between 18 and 34 years old participate at the highest rate, and they’re also the holiday’s biggest spenders, paying easily twice as much on their costumes as a child’s. There’s less trick-or-treating and more bar hopping. Alcohol is just as big a part of Halloween as candy.

A recent national broadcast news story reported that sociologists believe you can fully understand a culture by studying its holidays. Christmas gift-giving rituals reveal a great deal about family, for one. And Halloween’s emphasis on identity, horror, and maybe a little misbehavior, tells us a great deal about who we want to be or about what we fear we might become.

What I don’t want to become is an adult man dressed up as Dracula, as Batman, as Trump, as Ken from Barbie. I also will not be decorating the house with skeletons or hearses. We might buy a pumpkin or two to adorn the home’s front entrance, but I won’t be carving any spooky faces into their pulp.

And today, I’m looking online at restaurant menus and for an October 31st reservation. I’m thinking maybe seafood.