The Americanization Of Britain’s Halloween
- In 2024, Brits spent £776m on Halloween
- Autumn holds huge marketing and business potential
- Despite Halloween’s increasing popularity, 44% of Brits still prefer Guy Fawkes Night
My great-grandparents were married in the UK on October 31st 1942. When I was younger, I remember asking my grandmother if it was weird for her parents’ wedding (and subsequent anniversaries) to have been on Halloween. I had visions of an all-black wedding dress, a fashionably wilted bouquet, and pumpkins and skulls central to the décor, in a similar manner to how weddings in late December seem to feature deep red flowers, snow-covered ferns and fur.
The answer was simply ‘no’ because, for much of the 20th century, Halloween wasn’t really considered a thing in the UK. At least it wasn’t the Halloween we know today.
October may now be the time of carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, dressing up, and scary movies, but the extent to which we celebrate Halloween in the UK now is a relatively modern phenomenon, along with the even more recent commercialisation of the autumn season overall.
Autumn has evolved into a sort of pre-Christmas commercial festive period. As soon as we breach late-August, shops are selling cosy autumn products so we can adorn our homes with plush pumpkins, wreaths made of twine, and pumpkin spice candles – all perfect for us to cosy up on our sofas under a thick woollen blanket and binge-watch overly romanticised autumnal TV shows such as Gilmore Girls.
As such, autumn has become big business. Countryside tours are marketed as must-do seasonal activities, and pumpkin patches have become increasingly popular. So much so that, in a bizarrely backwards move, in 2024, farmers had to buy-in pumpkins from wholesalers to ensure their fields were full enough in time for an expectant public.
And that all leads up to Halloween, with carved pumpkins, trips to haunted houses and horror mazes, and spooky bric-a-brac scattered around our living rooms. Research from personal finance platform Finder estimates UK Halloween spending for 2024 to be around £776million. According to market research and intelligence firm Mintel, spending was £230million in 2013. That’s an increase of more than 237% in just over 10 years.
To understand how we have reached the commercial 21st century spooky season of today, we must first understand its origins.
Halloween: An Origin Story
The word Halloween originates from “All Hallows’ Eve”, the night before All Hallows’ Day (1st November) and All Souls’ Day (2nd November). Collectively referred to as Allhallowtide, a period to remember saints and the recently deceased, these holy days, and variations of, are still celebrated by religious and cultural groups around the world.
For trick-or-treating in particular, the Allhallowtide tradition of sharing soul cakes is suggested as a potential origin, dating back to the 15th century in Western Europe. Groups would go ‘souling’ door to door, collecting soul cakes in exchange for praying for the dead. In some regions, people would carry lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips. Swap that turnip out for a pumpkin, and does that sound familiar?
After the English Reformation, many Catholic feast days and rituals, including All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, were suppressed or discouraged as “superstitious”, while some traditions survived in Ireland and Scotland.
Many modern Halloween traditions are also thought to come from the Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest and seen as a liminal period when ‘spirits’ could more easily enter our world.
Over time, All Hallows’ Eve, Samhain, and other traditions were brought over to North America by European colonists and immigrants, and after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century, Halloween developed into a major holiday in the US. So much so that by the 1890s, the concept of Halloween greeting cards existed.
Although the general idea of “trick-or-treating” originated in Britain and Ireland – through souling and guising – the modern concept of saying “trick or treat” at the doors of homeowners wasn’t popularised (although unwelcomed) in the UK until the 1980s. The film E.T., with its well-known trick-or-treating scene, is often thought responsible.
As American film and TV were increasingly watched in the UK, the popularity of Halloween grew throughout the late-20th and 21st centuries, becoming the Halloween we recognise today.
The Business of Witchcraft
I hold my hands up as a victim of this too – every October I rewatch (multiple times) Practical Magic, the late-90s romantic fantasy about a family of witches living in cosy New England, to get me into that autumn/Halloween mood. And as a late-twenty-something raised on Disney, I can’t neglect to mention 1998’s Halloweentown, about a girl who discovers she is a witch as she explores a town birthed from every cliché of American Halloween.
But witches haven’t only been a money-spinner for Hollywood. Dr. Maria Carolina Zanette, Assistant Professor of Marketing at NEOMA Business School, tracked cultural depictions of witchcraft and outlined the commercial implications for marketing professionals.
“Businesses and markets have to operate within a cultural landscape. Marketing practices often use cultural motifs and archetypes, such as the ‘bad boy’ or ‘mountain man’ in US society, to influence consumers’ purchasing decisions,” explains Zanette.
Commercial activities are often associated with positive or negative characters with consumer choices often encouraged by adding a heroic subtext. Historically, western societies have focused these heroic ideals on straight, white male identities, while ‘witch’ derogatively referred to powerful women.
However, the feminist movement has led to a modern reinterpretation of witches as figures that rebel against the patriarchy. The witch has evolved from something evil to something empowering, and an increasing number of women have come to self-identify as witches.
Zanette suggests businesses should not overlook the fact that curiosity towards witchcraft has built a sizeable consumer base who feel less connection with traditionally heroic archetypes. Hex sells.
But businesses can also get it wrong – a good example being cosmetics retailer Sephora which made a clumsy attempt to cash in on spooky season a few years ago with the launch of a “Starter Witch Kit” – a $42 beauty bundle which, along with nine perfumes also included a deck of tarot cards, a rose quartz crystal and a bundle of white sage for cleansing rituals. The product received such a swathe of backlash across social media (notably the over 5m strong #WitchTok corner of TikTok) with customers accusing the company of cultural appropriation that the Kit was quickly pulled from shelves.
Halloweenomics
But the potential of Halloween, beyond the marketability of witches, should not be ignored.
Professor Wadim Strielkowski from Prague Business School coined the term “Halloweenomics” to highlight the marketing and business potential of the holiday, which the US already takes huge advantage of. In 2023, Americans spent a record $12.2billion over the Halloween period.
And the appeal of Halloween appears robust. In a 2014 study, Professor Strielkowski found that a worsening economic situation did not lead to cuts in Halloween-related spending. Individuals affected by economic crisis or job loss, in this case the 2008 financial crisis, embraced Halloween as a way to vent and experience joy through shopping and celebration.
With economies in recent years being thrown into turmoil by the COVID pandemic, wars, and global recessions, it’s possible we have all leant further into celebrations such as Halloween as a means of escape.
Why we love #spookyseason
Research from the University of Lisbon and Manchester Metropolitan University explored the role the high street plays in curating an atmosphere around Halloween.
Retailers appear to use nostalgia to bolster consumer engagement and emotional investment in the season. Concepts associated with Halloween – jack-o’-lanterns, skeletons, ghosts – traditionally associated with fear, are reimagined in a harmless way that elicits joy; cute inflatable monsters, characters in costume, skeleton hoopla.
A family friendly Halloween event revives and repositions the high street as an attractive and playful space for families and young people, increasing footfall and spending for the Halloween period.
Halloween’s growing popularity in the UK could also be related to a need for social connection and community engagement. Research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds cultural events offer individuals an opportunity to come together and engage in shared experiences, performances, and celebrations, reinforcing social bonds to foster a sense of belonging and enhance wellbeing.
Although a relatively modern and secular interpretation of a cultural celebration, Halloween does involve certain rituals and activities performed as a group; trick-or-treating, fancy-dress parties, pumpkin picking.
Perhaps over time, people in the UK have seen an opportunity to increasingly adopt a larger celebration of Halloween, to bring people together and enjoy something collectively as a group.
Halloween vs. Guy Fawkes
We might be spending more on skeletons and candy each year, but while 73% of Americans were said to plan to participate in Halloween activities in 2024, YouGov found just 27% of British adults planned to participate that same year. Of those not participating, beyond simply not being interested or feeling too old to celebrate, 10% said it was due to them seeing Halloween as an American tradition, while 8% said it’s too commercialised.
Who knows what the future autumns and Halloweens of the UK would look like in a world where 73% of Brits participate!
Interestingly, 44% of Brits still prefer Guy Fawkes Night to Halloween (only 16% prefer Halloween), and this preference is found across all age groups. And I’m inclined to agree.
To this day, for Guy Fawkes Night, my family gets together, eats good food, lights a bonfire, does their own fireworks – and I look back on past Guy Fawkes Nights nostalgically. Personally, Halloween never has, and I don’t think ever will, hold that same level of sentiment for me.
Yes, there are crochet pumpkins and an autumnal wreath hanging in my living room, but it appears we might still have quite a way to go until Brits are matching Americans for their Halloween celebrations.
By, Kyle Grizzell
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