United States

Introduction

In some areas of the United States, Halloween celebrations began as early as the 1800s. The tradition of trick-or-treating, however, did not spread throughout the nation until about the 1950s. Today, Halloween is a favorite folk holiday, and Americans spend nearly as much on Halloween costumes, decorations, and candy as they do at Christmas. Trick-or-treating is still popular with children, whereas adults enjoy decorating, going to costume parties, watching horror films, and participating in Halloween parades. Many children collect money for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on their trick-or-treating rounds. UNICEF is an international organization that works to protect the rights of children.

History

With the immigration of more than seven million people from countries all over the world during the middle 1800s, the United States became a melting pot of beliefs about the occult and ways of celebrating the harvest season. The Irish, who came in large numbers because of a famine in their country, had a particularly strong influence on the celebration of Halloween as a folk holiday.

While Irish boys and young men went from house to house in disguises, chanting and asking for bread or treats, girls and women stayed home and divined, or predicted, the identity of their future husbands. The Irish also discovered in the native New World pumpkin great possibilities for making Halloween lanterns to guide them about on Halloween night. Thus began the custom of carving jack-o'-lanterns as it is done today.

In the early 1900s, the towns of Anoka, Minnesota, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, hosted some of the first public Halloween celebrations and parades in the United States. With the early twentieth century also came a renewal of Halloween mischief making. Pranksters knocked over out-houses, broke windows, and turned in false fire alarms. They threw eggs, soaped windows, and disabled streetcars by disengaging trolley wires. Such activities were later curtailed by community and school groups.

World War II (1939–45) also slowed Halloween mischief, and after the war the holiday's focus changed to one of a wholesome folk holiday for children. During the 1950s and 1960s, dressing in costumes and trick-or-treating for candy reached the height of their popularity.

Since then, many schools and churches have turned away from supernatural Halloween themes and have started to organize parties and fairs for children along seasonal, historical, or religious themes. What was once a Halloween carnival is now a fall festival, and children dress in costumes on themes unrelated to the supernatural.

Devil's Night Fires in Detroit

October 30, the eve of Halloween, was called Devil's Night for many years in Detroit, Michigan. The name used to refer to a night of harmless pranks such as soaping windows. During the early 1980s, however, the pranks reached new heights, when fires began breaking out after dark on and around Devil's Night. In 1983, 650 fires were reported on Devil's Night. In 1984, there were 810 fires between October 29 and 31.

By 1985, reports of the Devil's Night fires had spread around the world. Television newspeople from Europe and Japan arrived to photograph the blazes. People fascinated with fire fighting gathered in the city each year for what became known as "the Super Bowl of fire fighting."

By the mid-1980s, Detroit citizens had had enough. They banded together by the thousands to patrol streets and neighborhoods just before Halloween. The effort paid off when the number of Devil's Night fires began to decrease. The city also launched a campaign to clean neighborhoods of trash such as abandoned cars, old tires, and garbage piles that were used to start the fires. Abandoned houses and apartment buildings have also been torn down, and the city limits the sale of gasoline in containers during the days before Devil's Night.

By 1997, Detroit mayor Dennis Archer was hoping to increase the number of citizen patrollers from 34,000 to 35,000. He told the city that Halloween had been given back to Detroit's children. The name Devil's Night has been changed to Angel's Night because of the help of these volunteers, who call themselves the Motor City Blight Busters. By 1999, the number of fires reported during the Halloween weekend had dropped to 123, which firefighters said was about normal for any weekend in Detroit. The number of fires reported on Devil's Night was less than fifty.

Boomers Boost Halloween

Halloween has become a major commercial holiday in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Figures show it is celebrated second only to Christmas in terms of retail sales, with dollars spent on costumes, candy, and decorations totaling about $2.5 billion in 1998. It is also second to Christmas in home decorating, with about 65 percent of families decorating for Halloween in 1998. Many writers say this trend has been brought about by "baby boomers" in the United States—adults born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s—who are reliving their childhood days, when Halloween was at the height of its popularity.

Influenced by movies and TV, older children and adults began to wear costumes that were more realistic and scary. Fake blood, scars, wounds, and severed body parts became popular, and characters such as the mummy, werewolf, vampire, Frankenstein, and the ax murderer (or his victim), roamed the streets on Halloween night.

I want to bite you … in the wallet!

Halloween costumes continue to reflect popular culture. Each year, characters from the latest hit movie, the year's big political scandal, the hottest rock group, or favorite TV commercial appear at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters and partygoers sometimes also dress as objects, like the Statue of Liberty, a piece of furniture, or a food item.

With increasing adult participation at Halloween parties and in Halloween parades in large cities such as New York and San Francisco, costumes are becoming even more elaborate. According to one source, adults are spending as much as __BODY__,000 on costumes and makeup. Hollywood costumers are selling special contact lenses, false teeth, artificial body parts, wigs, jewelry, and clothing to those who want to look exactly like their favorite Halloween character.

Many parade participants design their own costumes and props, sometimes spending months creating them. Halloween is being compared with Mardi Gras in terms of its parades, which increase in size and participation every year.

Foods, Recipes

Because Halloween is associated with the fall harvest, many of the foods served at traditional Halloween parties are those harvested around this time of year. Apples have always been a Halloween favorite, served baked or coated with caramel, or in the form of hot apple cider. Popcorn balls are another traditional Halloween treat, as are nuts and nut candies. And, of course, anything made from pumpkin.

Candy in all forms plays a big role in Halloween celebrations. Traditional Halloween sweets include candy pumpkins and corn kernels and peanut butter chews wrapped in orange or black paper. Children love to take home bags filled with many kinds of candy given by neighbors and friends. Some adults choose to give more healthful treats, such as granola bars or fruit chews.

Arts, Crafts, Games

Bobbing for apples was, and still is, a popular activity for Halloween parties. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, it was also very popular at public fall carnivals and school or church parties held around Halloween. Apples are an important part of the fall harvest in many parts of the world and have been associated with harvest festivals since the time of the Celts and the Romans in Europe. The game was probably brought to America by Scottish and Irish immigrants.

To play bobbing for apples, a dozen or more apples are placed in a large metal tub. Players have their hands tied behind their backs. They kneel on the floor around the tub and each player tries to grab an apple with his teeth—no hands allowed. Players duck their heads under the water, pushing an apple to the bottom of the tub with their mouths, then sink their teeth in and come up to win a prize.

In another version of bobbing for apples, the apple is suspended from a string by its stem and swung from a doorway. Players try to grab the apple with their teeth.

For More Information

Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt. Halloween: An American Holiday, An American History. New York: Facts on File, 1990.

Santino, Jack, ed. Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

Web sites

"Ben and Jerry's Halloween Page." [Online] http://www.benjerry.com/halloween/index.html (accessed on February 11, 2000).

"The History of Halloween." [Online] http://historychannel.com/cgi-bin/framed.cgi (accessed on February 11, 2000).

UNICEF's Home Page. [Online] http://www.unicef.org (accessed on February 1, 2000).

Halloween and Festivals of the Dead Sources

Beimler, Rosalind Rosoff. The Days of the Dead (Los Dias de Los Muertos). San Francisco: Collins, 1991, pp. 14–25.

Dineen, Jacqueline. Feasts and Festivals. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999.

DuVal, Linda. "That's the Spirit: Halloween Isn't Just For Kids Anymore; It's Now a Big-Time Grownup Thing." The Gazette, October 29, 1998.

Griffin, Robert H., and Ann H. Shurgin, eds. The Folklore of World Holidays. 2nd ed. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1999, pp. 279–82, 457–62, 604–13, 636–41.

Henderson, Helene, and Sue Ellen Thompson. Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary. 2nd ed. Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 1997, pp. 9, 178–79, 196, 305, 344.

Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 379–84.

Latsch, Marie-Luise. Traditional Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Graham Brash, 1988.

Law, Ruth. Pacific Light Cooking. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1998, pp. 26–27.

Lee, Bobbie. "Chinese Festivals in San Jose." Asian Week, April 22, 1994.

Let's Celebrate, compiled by John Foster. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 40.

Pitts, Lilla Belle, Mabelle Glenn, Lorrain E. Watters, and Louis G. Wersen, eds. Singing Together. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1960, p. 107.

Santino, Jack. All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994, pp. 148–67.

Scalora, Salvatore. "Celebrating the Spirits' Return." Américas 47, no. 5 (1995): 32–41.

Thompson, Sue Ellen, ed. Holiday Symbols 1998. Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 1998, pp. 61–64, 164–71, 191–93, 330–32.

Webb, Lois Sinaiko. Holidays of the World Cookbook for Students. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 1995, pp. 112, 154.

Web sites

"A Brief History of Halloween." [Online] http://dcls.org/x/archives/halloween.html (accessed on February 7, 2000).

"Day of the Dead." [Online] http://www.nacnet.org/assunta/dead.htm (accessed on February 9, 2000).

"The Days of the Dead." [Online] http://www.foodwine.com/food/egg/egg1096/daydead.html (accessed on February 9, 2000).

"Festivals and Folk Arts: Tomb Sweeping Day." Taiwan Republic of China. [Online] http://www.houstoncul.org/festival/tomb.txt (accessed on February 9, 2000).

"Nos Galan Gaeaf." Welsh Cultural Traditions. [Online] http://www.britannia.com/wales/culture1.html (accessed on February 9, 2000).

"Sugar Skulls." [Online] http://www.sat.lib.tx.us/html/DeadDay/sugar.htm (accessed on February 10, 2000).