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Trick$ and treat$
Americans will spend an average of $41.77 to celebrate Halloween this year, the National Retail Federation predicts, close to the $44.20 we spent last year. This is the second largest decorating holiday, right behind Christmas, and generates almost $7-billion in spending. That's a lot of candy corn.
Who was that masked man?
Most of that per capita spending - $14.85 - goes for costumes, with candy a close second at $14.41. We'll spend $10.37 on decorations and just $2.14 on greeting cards.
How to haunt
By far the favored way to celebrate Halloween is handing out candy, which 77.6 percent of consumers say they plan to do. A slow second, at 42.4 percent, is carving a pumpkin, followed by taking the children trick-or-treating (32.9 percent), dressing in costume (31.1 percent), giving or attending a party (25.6 percent) and visiting a haunted house (16.3 percent).
Life or death
"Halloween decorating has shifted from the ghostly and ghoulish to life-affirming harvest-home themes, which also extends the decorating season right through Thanksgiving," says marketing expert Pam Danziger, author of Why People Buy Things They Don't Need. The skeleton-and-body-parts decorating "became too real after 9/11," she said in a telephone interview. "Now it's back to the focus of the season: the harvest, thanks for the bounty." Harvest-home sales grew 42 percent, to nearly $600-million, between 2001 and last year, while sales of Halloween-themed decorations dropped 22 percent to $458-million. Colored leaves, cornstalks, dried wreaths and Indian corn can survive from back-to-school until the turkey leftovers are gone.
Scared to death
Scary is still better for older kids and teens. For them, "the whole allure of Halloween is about being scared to death," said Dottie Errico, site director for Better Homes & Gardens magazine's Web site, www.bhg.com "It wouldn't be nearly as popular if it wasn't scary." It's the adults who don't want to go for the ghoul when it comes to costumes: "Adult women don't want to dress up like something out of The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre," she said. They want glamour: the beauty queen, the Renaissance princess "What better use for that god-awful old bridesmaid's dress?", or doctor or nurse.
The greatest pumpkin
Unofficially, the largest known pumpkin is a 1,458-pound giant grown this year in Henniker, N.H. At a competition Oct. 4, it weighed 120 pounds more than the record holder the year before. See it at www.pumpkinnook.com.
Native Americans
Pumpkins are native to the New World, as are corn and tomatoes.
Be very afraid
Fear of pumpkins is curcurbitophobia. Pumpkins are members of the Curcurbita family, which includes squash and cucumbers. Fear of Halloween is Samhainophobia. Samhain is the Celtic lord of the dead.
Snappy dressers
The top 10 kids' costumes this year, according to bhg.com, the Web site of Better Homes and Gardens magazine: (1) Pirates of the Caribbean; (2) SpongeBob SquarePants; (3) Harry Potter; (4) Princess; (5) Spider-Man; (6) Cat in the Hat; (7) The Incredible Hulk; (8) Lord of the Rings characters; (9) Fairy; (10) Lion King. Also at that site: the top 9 costumes for adults, directions for making your own costumes, a quiz on "Which Costume Is for You?" and seven last-minute costumes you can put together from what you have around the house.
Pumpkins for kids
Carve a pumpkin online, play Halloween wordfind, watch dancing Halloween figures, print out pictures to color, and find other fun stuff at www.pumpkinnook.com/kidstuff.htm
Pumpkins for adults
Find easy decorating suggestions for Halloween from Country Living magazine at www.countryliving.com and click on "fall country classics." If you can wrap a strand of raffia around a votive candle, you can do these.
Thought for the day
Halloween presents "a balance of good versus evil," said Dottie Errico of Better Homes & Gardens' Web site. "Fear and evil are present in our culture in a way they haven't been in decades, and that's what the holiday is all about."
- Information from the National Retail Federation, Unity Marketing, www.bhg.com and www.pumpkinnook.com was used in this report.