Everything you need to know about Halloween 2018

The scariest, silliest, sugariest night
of the year is finally here. Americans take their Halloween pretty
seriously, even if many of us don’t know exactly why we carve
pumpkins, hang fake ghosts, hand out candy, or dress up like
something dragged in by a graveyard cat.

As it turns out, we’ve been wearing
Halloween costumes for nearly two millennia. But we’ve added plenty
of modern twists to this ancient tradition.

Archaeologists are still unearthing
Halloween’s roots at Celtic spiritual centers like the Hill of Ward
(originally known as Tlachtga) in County Meath, Ireland. The
holiday is descended most directly from the celebration of Samhain
(SAH-win), the Celtic New Year observed between the sunsets of
October 31 and November 1.

On Samhain eve, at the death of another year, spirits (not to
mention fairies, demons, and other creatures) were believed to walk
the earth, traveling to the afterlife on a night when doorways
between our world and the spirit world were thrown open.

Tradition holds that bonfires were also kindled at major sites
like Tlachtga, where evidence of large-scale burning has indeed
been found. These fires may have been used for sacrifices, or to
symbolize the sun, since Tlachtga was known as one of the sun’s
goddesses. (See pictures of
crypts and catacombs^[1].)

Celts also began the Halloween tradition of wearing costumes,
according to the American Folklife Center at the Library of
Congress. The Celts donned animal skin to hide themselves from
spirits, or they wore masks and blackened their faces to
impersonate ancestors who had preceded them to the spirit world.
(See how people
dressed up a century ago^[2].)

Revelers disguised as spirits are also believed to have gone
from house to house engaging in silly acts in exchange for food and
drink. These acts were possibly inspired by an earlier custom of
leaving food and drink outdoors as offerings to supernatural
beings. This likely inspired today’s trick-or-treat traditions.
(Read more on the
first Halloween costumes^[3].)

The church didn’t attempt to do away with the celebrations,
however. The night before Samhain continued to be observed with
bonfires, costumes, and parades, but it was all rebranded with a
new name: All Hallows’ Eve, which later became
"Halloween."

European immigrants brought Halloween to the United States,
where different Old World traditions mingled in America’s cultural
stew. The celebration gained steam with the explosion of Irish
immigration to the United States in the 1800s.

It was only a matter of time before politicians got into the
act. Anoka, Minnesota, may be home to the United States’ oldest
official Halloween celebration. In 1920, the city began staging a
parade and bonfire to mark the day.

The celebration may have had another purpose, too. Anoka historians
say^[4] townsfolk wanted to curb
Halloween pranks that loosed cows on Main Street and upended
outhouses, so the official celebration might’ve arisen in an
attempt to promote good, clean fun.

One of the most persistent urban legends claims that people hand
out candy tainted by poisons, needles, or razor blades.

University of Delaware sociologist Joel Best^[5], who conducts extensive
research^[6] on tainted Halloween
candy, says he’s been unable to find even one substantiated report
of a child dying or being seriously injured from eating
trick-or-treat candy.

“Somebody gets a candy bar and sticks a nail through it and puts
a picture up on their Facebook page saying, Hey, this is the treat
that I got,” Best says. “And then eventually it gets debunked.”

Though these scares inevitably turn out to be hoaxes, Best
notes, some years do bring new twists. In recent years, Colorado’s
legalization of marijuana caused some unfounded concern. “There was
a fear that people would pass out edible marijuana and cause
children to overdose,” he says, “which, among other things,
completely ignores how much edible marijuana costs.”

“It reminds me of 1982 when the Tylenol poisonings occurred in
September, and that led to a lot of speculation that there would
surely be a lot of poisoned candy,” Best says. “There may be some
clown stuff this year just because of the timing.”

But even creepy clowns aren’t new, Best notes. “One of the
things that surprised me is that this has actually happened before.
It’s just that this one, also, is amped up by social media,” he
says. “There have been periodic clown scares not just in the U.S.
but in European countries.” (Read about why
clowns scare us^[7].)

The Halloween may have originated as a religious and spiritual
observance, but these days it’s very big business.

This year, seven out of every 10 Americans will hand out candy,
while half will decorate their homes or dress in costumes. Total
spending on decorations, costumes, and candy is estimated to reach
a record $9.1 billion in 2017. That’s a consumer average of $86.13,
nearly twice as much as the 2005 average, which was a mere $48.

Wondering who’s most likely to show up at your door this year?
Expect a nonstop parade of costumed kid crime fighters, according
to the NRF survey. Princess costumes are this year’s most popular
costume among children, while both Batman and Star Wars characters
also appear in the top five. Witches, Spider-Mans, and pirates will
also be out in full force.

Nearly half of all adults plan to dress up this year; some
several million witches are expected to be on the streets and in
the skies this Halloween. Many of those adults surveyed also
planned to dress as characters from the Avengers (sans Spider-Man),
zombies, and pirates. (A new Google effort to chart trending
costume searches, the Frightgeist^[8], suggests we’ll also see
our share of Wonder Women, Harley Quinns, clowns, and
unicorns.)

Far from the pumpkin’s native roots of Central America, chilly
Illinois produces most of the United States’ pumpkins.

Illinois produced some 318 million pounds of pumpkins in 2015,
followed by California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture reports^[9]. Together, the nation’s
major pumpkin-producing states harvested almost 40,000 acres of
pumpkins in 2015, a haul worth about $90 million.

A 2009 Pew Research
poll^[10] reported that nearly 1
in 5 Americans, some 18 percent, said they have actually seen or
felt the presence of a ghost.

Now that’s a scary thought.