The Halloween spirit is still alive!
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Halloween spirit
The Halloween spirit is alive and well! All though, Halloween has taken a different turn from one I was a little girl! The excitement and the anticipation have not changed. When I was little, your costume was a personal put together and done by yourself thing, that took a little time, effort, and creativity! Today all a kid has to do is beg their parent to buy them a costume! I do not see too many kids making their costumes too much today.
There was not a limited time to trick or treat when I was young. You ran home from school, wolfed down dinner, got your double brown paper bag and went out to get as much candy as your bag would hold. When your bag got too full, you ran back home, got another double brown paper bag and went out again! My mother made us come home at 9 pm. Today, most kids use Halloween designed plastic bags!
Halloween gets much more advertisement than Thanksgiving! We never saw a commercial about Halloween! Cartoons and scary movies were around, but not to the degree they are today! If you go to the movie theatre today, half of the movies are scary at this time of year!
Other things have changed, such as the Halloween decorations! In my neighborhood, almost every house has some sort of outside deor! Down the street, this man has about fifty different scary monsters in his front yard! He is in his front yard on Halloween, with a chain saw in his hand scaring kids! Other people have turned their garages into haunted houses that you have to walk through before you get your treat! There are more haunted houses, pumpkin patches with hay rides, and other Halloween amusements!
People in the United States spend a lot of money on Halloween around seven billion dollars! It has become big business for the retailers! Over 2.5 billion is spent on costumes of which 300 million is spent on pet costumes! Two billion is spent on candy and just a little bit of that is spent on decorations. Yes, Halloween is a big business! Nevertheless, the Halloween spirit is still alive today, and I do not see it dying down soon!