The fall season is upon us and with that comes Halloween. Halloween does not fit into the standard holiday mold because it emphasizes community, creativity, and flexibility in how it’s celebrated. It is celebrated with spooky traditions, creative costumes, and an abundance of pre-wrapped candy ready to be consumed. It started as an ancient custom to celebrate the dead and has become one of the most commercialized and celebrated holidays in the United States. How did this come to be?
Brief History of Halloween
The first traces of the Halloween holiday of today, came from an ancient Celtic festival of Samhain around 2,000 years ago. This festival celebrated the completion of the summer season and the harvest they had just finished. Bonfires would be lit, and costumes would be worn to ward off potential ghosts.
Through many centuries, this holiday would evolve because of Roman and Christian influences to make it more in line with harvest festivals and connect with religious ideas. These religious ideas include the introduction of All Souls’ Day just two days after Halloween which celebrated the living world coming in contact with the dead.
Eventually, many of those earlier superstitious reasons for celebrating Halloween were lost after World War II with families introducing trick-or-treating and more kid friendly activities into the once more serious holiday. Over the years, many things have been adopted as a Halloween symbol such as the jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, colors of black and orange (Go Bengals!), bats, candy corn, and many other things. Once the market finds a way to monetize or capitalize on an event, it tends to result in the commercialization of an event or holiday. This definitely happened with Halloween.
Commercialization and Business of Halloween
As outlined above, this holiday was not commercialized at all in the beginning. It was simply a celebration of a season ending and getting ready for the winter months ahead. However, in the 20th century, Halloween quickly became the 2nd most commercialized holiday in the United States. This commercialization has come from the candy, costumes, and decorations industries.
With the introduction of trick-or-treating in the 1900’s, the candy industry single handedly carries this holiday with over $3 billion spent each year on Halloween candy just in the U.S. Some of the most popular candy and chocolate brands handed out each year are Reese’s, M&M’s, Kit Kat, Twix, Snickers, Hershey’s, Skittles, and Starburst. Each of these brands and many others experience significant spikes in sales during this time of year. They can capitalize on this increased demand by creating Halloween themed packaging, new flavors, and fun marketing campaigns for their candies.
One example of a brand taking advantage of the Halloween season was Snickers with their “Hunger Bars”. They creatively branded each of their Snicker’s bars with different behaviors that people would exhibit when hungry such as “Whiny”, “Grouchy”, “Loopy”, “Spacey” and many more. Snickers is well-known for their “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” slogan, and this new campaign took this existing successful slogan and added a new Halloween twist. With the special-edition candy bars, Halloween theming, and hilarious ads this made for a very successful Snickers Halloween campaign.
As the leaves start to fall and the weather becomes brisker, we see the fall season is upon us and Halloween is lurking. Observing how Halloween has turned from an ancient festival honoring the dead into a vibrant and colorful celebration packed with candy, costumes, and decorations is amazing! Halloween has become a staple in the United States and a major business event with billions of dollars on the table for the companies who can take advantage of the millions of people who are wanting a spooky fun night on October 31st. So, remember, when you are in costume this Halloween, you are not just participating in the Halloween fun, you are part of the ever evolving and flourishing Halloween business in America! Everyone have a Happy Halloween!