Every year, kids around the world look forward to the 31st of October. Here in America, however, kids may be doing so for the wrong reasons. Halloween started out as a Celtic holiday to celebrate the night before All Saints Day and has been turned into a farce of costume parties and trick-or-treating.
However, it’s possible that it isn’t the American people’s fault, but rather the American Industry. The amount of money that grocery and retail stores bring in from candy and costume sales is staggering. I should know; I used to work at a Cub Foods. Every day we would go through hundreds of pounds of various Halloween candy, and that’s only during September. Once the actual holiday gets here, grocery stores will be rolling in dough.
But is this transformation from a traditional harvest festival into a money-making scheme for corporate America a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose that depends on how you look at it. On one side, we have the American economy floundering, with something like a few trillion dollars in debt, and anything that stimulates American industry is definitely good. On the other hand, as a society we have taken something that was once an intrinsic part of an ancient culture and warped it into an excuse to dress up, go to parties, and get free candy.
Halloween has very much become a staple of American society and economy. Without it, there would be no reason to dress up as your favorite superhero or movie character. But then, would that really be a bad thing?