Jack-o'-lantern over yuletide carols?
Halloween may be creeping up on Christmas
Every year, Dana Tuttle turns the outside of her house in Hagerstown, Maryland, into an over-the-top display of Halloween cheer. Yes, cheer.
Her themes have included the Tower of Terror, featuring a refrigerator box made into an elevator with a strobe light that people could enter; “Five Nights at Freddy's” (a video
game series which takes place inside a pizza parlor) where Tuttle served pizza to the neighbors; and “Wreck-It Ralph” in which Tuttle created an entire candy shop and her husband, a car painter, painted a box to look like a race car. Tuttle's motivation for decorating for the traditionally spooky holiday isn't to elicit screams — but rather laughter.
“Even before I had kids I was a Halloween person, and once I had kids, it was an excuse to have fun with it,” Tuttle said. “I just can't help myself.”
Tuttle's Christmas decorations are nowhere near as elaborate as her Halloween decorations, she said.
Without activities such as trick-or-treating, Christmas lacks some of the community togetherness Tuttle enjoys during Halloween, she said.
By no means is Tuttle the only person slaving over Halloween décor for weeks — she begins gathering her ideas Sept. 1 and “tries not to go crazy too early” — while spending significantly less time decorating for Christmas.
It's made many question: Is Halloween the new Christmas?
A holiday exploding in popularity
Not yet, but it might be on its way.
Of course, in some places, Christmas will always be number one — and there's no place that loves Christmas more than Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was established on Christmas Eve in 1741 and is known as “Christmas City.”
Each year, thousands of travelers trek to its National Historic Landmark District for the holiday festivities including holiday-themed tours, horse-drawn carriage rides and Christkindlmarkt, a Christmas market with 150 vendors recognized as one of the best American holiday markets by Travel + Leisure.
Through its 28 years, the market, modeled after German open-air holiday markets, has grown exponentially. It regularly attracts 90,000 people to its four large tents and courtyard.
But a jack o'lantern event in the Hudson Valley — the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze — now attracts more than 180,000 over it's month-long duration.
And that is indicative of the growth around Halloween reported by the National Retail Federation, a trade association representing the retail industry that has tracked how consumers celebrate and shop for more than a decade.
According to the NRF, this year, consumers will each spend an average of $92 on Halloween food and decorations compared to $227 for the winter holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. (NRF traditionally tallies holiday retail sales from Nov. 1-Dec. 31 rather than evaluating them individually).
That might seem like a big gap, but as Katherine Cullen, NRF's senior director of industry and consumer insight pointed out, Halloween is a single day and the winter holidays are spread out over several months.
Plus, Halloween is quickly gaining on the winter holidays — consumers will spend almost 30 percent more on Halloween this year than they did 10 years ago, according to NRF.
One Halloween event's wild growth
Halloween might be a low-obligation holiday, but for some organizations, its also serious business, including for Historic Hudson Valley, New York. For the past 16 years, the nonprofit has organized The Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze, a display of more than 7,000 illuminated jack o' lanterns, all designed and hand-carved on site by a team of artisans, in Greater Sleepy
Hollow County, the home of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
When Historic Hudson Valley began hosting the display, nicknamed The Blaze, in 2005, nobody knew what to expect in terms of turnout, said Rob Schweitzer, Historic Hudson Valley vice president of communications.
That year, the event lasted eight nights and 18,000 people showed up, which was way beyond their expectations, Schweitzer said. Through the years, it has exploded in popularity. Last year, it took place over 48 nights and 180,000 people came.
It started with displays of dinosaurs, windmills and carousels made up of hundreds of jack o'lanterns. Now it includes the Museum of Pumpkin Art and the Pumpkin Planetarium, as well as other features. For the first time this year, the Blaze is also extending to Old Bethpage Village Restoration on Long Island.
These days, the Blaze starts the third week of September and extends to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, making this year's dates Sept. 18 to Nov. 21. To Schweitzer, that's because it's much more than just another Halloween event.