Written By Sherwood Kohn
Halloween and Thanksgiving (or rather the day after Thanksgiving) now rival Christmas for the title of most lucrative marketing holidays of the year.
It has always seemed misleading to refer to the day after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday.” I know that the merchants call it that to indicate that they depend on the pre-Christmas shopping on November 23 to put their sales figures “into the black,” but to those of us who grew up with the stock market crash of 1929 ringing in their memories, the term conjures up images of men jumping out of Wall Street windows and people rushing to withdraw their money from banks before they folded.
As for Halloween, which as you know, is really All Hallows’ Eve, a day with its origins in ancient Celtic ritual, and one that is celebrated by Wiccans (see story on Page 36) as their holy day, today’s quasi-holiday is marketed with astonishing fervor (and profit) by almost every retail organization in the country, not to mention the specialized Halloween stores that spring up in October to take advantage of the nation’s fascination with the macabre.
According to the National Retail Federation, shoppers are expected to spend $4.96 billion on Halloween stuff this year, and more than $7 billion on November 23. That’s more than the national budgets of many Third World countries.
What a rich nation we are, to be able to afford all of that shopping, more than half of which will be splurged on a pagan belief that on October 31 the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes blurred.
I don’t mean to be a party poop. I enjoy costumes and candy corn as much as the next guy. I just think it is remarkable, not to mention a bit bizarre, that although we celebrate a pagan festival, many of us look askance at the modern version of a religion based on belief in the gods of the earth.
Okay, so the modern pagans call themselves Wiccans and witches, are not monotheistic and believe in spells and magic. The last time I checked, they weren’t punching people out, snorting cocaine or laying waste to the countryside. Besides, for them, just as it is for most of us (albeit for somewhat different reasons), Halloween is a special day.
I’m only asking for a little tolerance here. It’s not fashionable to burn witches any more. In fact, television has made them sort of appealing (remember “Bewitched”?) And just for fun, you might give an extra treat to that kid who knocks at your door on October 31, dressed as something from hell.
