Trick or treating, dressing up as spooky ghosts, and enjoying a pumpkin spice latte on a chilly fall day: Halloween is here and so is the season of the falling leaves (even though the weather has still been quite warm lately!)
The holiday has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Nowadays, it is celebrated in almost every part of the world although nowhere as popular as in the United States and Canada. About 76% of Americans do something special to celebrate Halloween, whether it be passing out candy or decorating their homes. In fact, in 2022 total expenditure for Halloween goods hit a record high of $10.6 billion, which is a 5% increase from 2021. Costumes, candy and decorations account for the big numbers with over $3.5 billion spend on each.
Even though these numbers seem enormous, it does make sense when taking a look at all those American Halloween movies, especially with seeing those lavishly decorated homes. If you were wondering whether people actually put that much effort into their decorations; They absolutely do! After living in the US for a couple months, I noticed that the spending culture is much different from Europe, where a number of people would be more worried about the energy bill at the end of the month. Americans are much more likely to spend a big part of their money on these kinds of things and are enjoying them for a few weeks, whereas here Halloween decorations are mostly used on the 31st of October and then stored in the basement again.
In Germany, 320 million euros were brought in for retailers from Halloween sales, which is a large contrast to the amount spent in the US. It is not a traditional German celebration, but young people know about it through social media and television, and is the largest consumer in this sector. Other European countries such as Spain and the UK also take part in the celebration and almost 50% of the British population spend money on Halloween every year. Spain is the number one producer of pumpkins in the European Union, even though they do not celebrate as lavishly as other countries.
On the other side of the world people are also familiar with the spooky day but do not necessarily celebrate it in the same way. Out of the over 123 million people living in Japan, only 20 million celebrate Halloween, though it must be noted that the word “celebrated” is not clearly defined here and can vary from buying candy to actually dressing up. 90% of the Philippines know of or celebrate Halloween whereas less than 50% of the Indian population recognise it. Countries such as Thailand are known to have the best Halloween parties in the world, but also have a number of citizens who do not celebrate it at all.
After all, every country has its own traditions and cultural associations with certain days, which makes it so interesting to see how Halloween is celebrated across the world!
