Halloween in the United States operates at a scale that surprises even Americans when it is laid out. It is routinely described as the country's second-largest commercial holiday after Christmas, and the parts of it are individually enormous.
The haunt industry
This is the part with no real equivalent anywhere else. The United States supports thousands of professional haunted attractions, employing tens of thousands of actors, designers, technicians and makeup artists every autumn.
They fall into rough categories:
- Theme park events — Halloween Horror Nights, Knott's Scary Farm, Howl-O-Scream, Fright Fest
- Independent craft haunts — 13th Gate, Netherworld, The Darkness
- Historic-site events — Eastern State Penitentiary
- Farm and charity haunts — hayrides, corn mazes, and the Jaycees-style community operations the whole industry partly grew out of
The craft haunts are the interesting ones. A place like the 13th Gate is a permanent, purpose-built set on the scale of a film production, operating a few dozen nights a year.
The season keeps getting longer
The clearest measure of growth is the calendar. Halloween Horror Nights Orlando now opens on 28 August and runs 48 nights. Howl-O-Scream opened across five parks on 11 September. Knott's runs 26 nights from 17 September.
Twenty years ago these were October events. The season now starts in late summer, because demand supports it.
Pumpkins
America grows well over a billion pounds of pumpkins a year, and a striking share of them are not eaten. Carving pumpkins are bred for size, wall thickness and a flat base, not flavour — which is why the flesh from a jack-o'-lantern makes such disappointing pie.
That is a genuinely American industry: the pumpkin lantern only became the standard because the crop was abundant here at the right time of year, replacing the turnips and beets carved in Ireland and Scotland.
Costumes and candy
Adults now spend more on Halloween costumes than children do, and pet costumes are a substantial category in their own right — a detail that says a good deal about where the holiday has ended up.
Halloween candy outsells every other confectionery season in the country, which is why the industry has historically been such an enthusiastic promoter of trick-or-treating.
What it grew from
All of this rests on a rural Irish and Scottish folk festival about the turn of the year, carried over by immigrants who had no expectation of any of it. The full story is here.
The scale is American. The festival is not.