Halloween is the second-largest commercial holiday in America after Christmas, yet very few people discuss or actually know its origins. Nevertheless, Americans spend an average $8 billion annually wearing costumes as a fun way to get free candy from strangers, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual survey.
According to History.com, the holiday originated from the 18th century festival of Samhain, which marked the beginning of winter. Since many deaths were prominent during this season, people partaking in festivities began wearing costumes consisting of animal heads and skins as a way to ward off ghosts.
While the decorations and some of the costumes these days may be a tad grotesque, most people aren’t dressing up for Halloween to scare off ghosts. Instead, they are dressing up in the name of discounted chocolate and fun costumes, which, quite frankly, is a bit strange.
Just think about it. On one day in October, mass amounts of people buy bags of candy for over-decorated children, tweens and teens who go door to door with sacks basically begging for candy. What is the purpose of this?
Initially, this concept of trick-or-treating stemmed from a tradition during the Middle Ages. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, “children and sometimes poor adults would dress up in the aforementioned costumes and go around door to door during Hallowmas begging for food or money in exchange for songs and prayers, often said on behalf of the dead.”
But nowadays there’s no reason for this; you could just skip the traversing through neighborhoods, go to the store and buy yourself the candy you actually want. Instead, people spend copious resources to create or buy costumes that they will wear one evening to get an abundance of candy that they will either unhealthily overeat or throw away.
At the end of the day, the concept of trick-or-treating on Halloween seems to be fueled by our consumerism. This can be seen in the insane amounts of money people spend on Halloween costumes. According to the NRF, more than $3.2 billion are spent on Halloween costumes each year.
Furthermore, our consumerism showcases itself in not only the amount of money spent on costumes but also how and what we consider to be free.
“Free is magic,” says Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. “If you offer something for free, people will gladly spend money to get it.” This idea of getting something for free intrigues us and creates a dynamic within people that views the result (free candy) as worth all the work, energy and time put into obtaining it.
Unfortunately, consumerism isn’t the only unhealthy trend forming around Halloween. This abundance of money and time spent on costumes has created immense opportunity for people to use this holiday as a pass to culturally appropriate. For instance, on her now-canceled show, “Megyn Kelly Today,” Kelly herself promoted the ideology that on Halloween blackface and cultural appropriation should be considered acceptable just as it was in the olden days.
“Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person that puts on whiteface for Halloween,” Kelly said. “And back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
However, blackface and culturally appropriation has never been and never will be okay. When one culturally appropriates they “take significant elements (symbols, dress, words, practices, etc) from one culture and remove all original context or meaning, usually with the goal of using these elements to make oneself seem ‘edgy,’ or to allow and encourage monetary profit. This can happen in a variety of forms but often around Halloween it involves wearing ‘costumes’ that rely on specific cultural signifiers and stereotypes,” according to the “I Am Not a Costume” movement by the Laurier Students’ Public Interest Research Group.
So as college students with limited budgets, one way to avoid both consumerism and cultural appropriation would simply be to not spend money on a costume and take this very basic checklist into consideration:
- Is this costume based on cultural stereotypes?
- Are parts of this costume considered sacred to another culture? (ex. Native American Headdress)
- Does this costume require the darkening of your skin? (Easy hint: Don’t do it!)
If the answer is yes to any other these questions, find a different costume. If you are still unsure about whether your costume could be culturally offensive, be sure to ask someone else’s opinion, preferably someone who is mindful and conscious of other cultures. Ultimately, we must remember that someone’s culture is not a costume and by creating a costume out of that culture we dehumanize large groups of people.
The Halloween we celebrate today is reminiscent of some of the 18th-century traditions, although the reasons for which we decide to celebrate it are completely different. Back then they celebrated in preparation for winter, whereas we today use it for fun and food. However you choose to celebrate this year, just be mindful of the motives behind your celebration.
