Frightening Season

Written by Jonathan Krogh

Dear Decoration Monsters:

I was stunned by a neighbor’s 26-foot inflatable vampire, priced at slightly under $1,000 and dominating the… well, dominating everything! I think it may have been an attempt to dwarf the dozens of 12-foot skeletons that Home Depot debuted during the pandemic and that now seem to litter every block. (“Skelly” even has his own Wikipedia page.) Skelly’s designers wanted to make him tall enough to peer into second-story windows. This new hulking inflatable Dracula is tall enough to perform roof inspections. Obviously, this got me musing about Halloween expenditures.

Were you aware that Halloween is now the third most decorated holiday in America, as measured by money spent? Coming in at around $4.2 billion last year, Halloween money is inching closer to the $6 billion spent on Christmas. But the combined spending on both holidays is completely dwarfed by the estimated $12 billion being spent to decorate our neighborhoods, screens and airwaves in preparation for November 3rd. Mitch McConnell used to joke on the Senate floor that political spending should not be capped because Americans spent more money annually on potato chips than politics. But poor Mitch is living in the past; these days potato chip sales are a paltry $7 billion. That leaves a lot of money for vampires and scary clowns!

So why the sudden acceleration in Halloween spending? Bear with me, there is synergy here. Yes, retailers needed something lucrative between back-to-school sales and Thanksgiving. And there is a certain genius behind putting bags of fun-sized candy on the shelves in July: you shop early for the trick-or-treaters, finish those bags, and return to the store three or four times before October 31st. But I think there’s something deeper going on in the American psyche.

Halloween is all about controlled fear. Haunted houses, front-yard graveyards, porch goblins and scary stories are fun in the end because they are harmless. The rush of a scare quickly fades when we remember that none of it is real. Stories of razor blades and LSD in Halloween candy are unsubstantiated, merely contrived to stir up anxiety. (Far more frightening are people who think Circus Peanuts are an appropriate treat.) All that spooky stuff helps us feel in control over what frightens us. My thought may send chills down your spine: cultures where people have little power over their lives seem to become the most superstitious. Celebrations like Halloween offer a way to assert a sense of control when we otherwise feel helpless.

Corollate then the parallel growth of Halloween and political spending. As more people are locked out of the political process by the astronomical entry costs, our pent-up frustration comes out in our more financially accessible ghoulish adornment. And true to the American spirit of one-upmanship, a new competition unfolding where “My vampire is bigger than your skeleton!” becomes a source of pride. To the delight of Temu, all this converges within a week of the election.

I know as pastor I am supposed to offer some pithy spiritual insight to cut through all the blather, but I think my best response to both politics and fright fest is the same. Although often attributed to Martin Luther or C.S. Lewis, it was Thomas Moore who in 1553 wrote, "The devil, that proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked." I will let you decide where to assign that quote.

Wondering if I should hand out potato chips to the trick-or-treaters, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

Jonathan Krogh
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