What are you going as, this Halloween? The discussion in our household starts in the spring, takes in many twists and reversals over the course of the summer, and usually settles towards the end of September. This year we have been through John Lennon, a clown, an Oompa Loompa and the blue astronaut from the video game Among Us, before settling on Willy Wonka (one child) and “a dark spirit riding a dinosaur” (the other). If I was fun enough to dress up and take part I’d be shooting for something smarmily high concept like the death of American democracy – I’m not, so I’m not – but anyway, all of this is to say that Americans still take Halloween much more seriously than the British.
It’s a gap that is obviously closing. This year is the first time in almost two decades that I have been in the UK for Halloween, and most people I talk to seem to suggest that Halloween prep here is out of control. (Inevitably these remarks are delivered in vaguely accusatory tones and with a measure of pro forma resentment that, honestly, I’ve missed.) Research undertaken this year by a personal finance site put Halloween spending in the UK at £776m, a number that has more than tripled since 2013, with an average spend of £25 a person, rising to £43 in London. And while these increases are predominantly pushed by gen Z and millennials, the data suggests that their elders are being dragged along to the party behind them.
For anyone over 40, I suspect that participation is unwilling, for the very good reason that it was not like this in our day. Nobody spent money on Halloween costumes for their kids in the 80s. People would have thought you were mad. Like the inverse snobbery of aristos with patched holes at their elbows, costumes back then had to be low-key and homespun, which is why I still have PTSD from being sent to a party, age eight, wearing a black bin liner cinched at the waist with kitchen string. (I was supposed to be a witch, but the first words out of the mouth of a little shit called Philip were: “Why are you dressed as a bin?” Thanks, Mum!)
Halloween costumes on both sides of the Atlantic have become a lot sharper since then. Last year, in a moment of weakness in the Halloween aisle at Walmart, I gave in and bought my daughter the $40 motorised inflatable dinosaur costume that you bet she will be wearing again this year. She was joined at the school’s Halloween fair by other kids in gently whirring, battery-operated inflatable costumes, mostly sumo wrestlers and aliens, plus lots of Wednesday Addamses and the occasional inanimate object, a popular subcategory of costume in the US. (When he was five, my kids’ half-brother went to nursery as “a pillow”, and a very good pillow he was too.) Entire streets in our Manhattan neighbourhood were transformed, culminating in the Hollywood-level effects and decorations put into the houses on 69th Street, which annually draws crowds from across the city. You could send your kid up the high street and be confident that every single business, including Starbucks and the pharmacy chains, would have sweets ready for them behind the counter.
As far as I can tell, the coverage here hasn’t reached this level yet. Most houses aren’t decorated, and in the online parents groups all Halloween posts are heavy with warnings not to knock on any house where there isn’t external evidence that the occupants are into it. Retail is another story, and in the supermarkets the rollout of Halloween-themed produce is everywhere, from bat-shaped nuggets in M&S to the endless seasonal bastardisation of the Oreo (you could write a PhD on Oreo and brand over-reach). And this is before you get to the market saturation of pumpkin spice, the worst US import to Britain since nuclear-tipped cruise missiles at Greenham Common.
My American children are not impressed. When I asked if they thought British Halloween had caught up with its American equivalent, my daughter gave me the same pitying look she used when asking me: “Do you know what a meme is?” No, it is not up to scratch yet. The costumes in this country are, apparently, too hung up on conventionally spooky at the expense of funny, outrageous, or whatever random image pops into your head and you spend weeks trying to make wearable. Although, obviously, the most terrifyingly effective costume this year would be a simple white sheet imprinted with the outline of a US ballot paper.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
