Depth interviews were conducted with both children and adults and a written questionnaire was administered to undergraduate university students. Participant observation was used to study a variety of child and adult Halloween practices including fairs, parades, costume contests, trick-or-treating, parties, dances, and a race for costumed runners. The paper is a work in progress and is based on primary data collected over the past two Halloweens in a city of one million people in the western United States. In this paper I attempt to answer such questions using a combination of secondary data and both qualitative and quantitative primary data. What accounts for this opposing symbolism? What is Halloween all about? How is it changing? What do Halloween costumes and iconography represent? And what do contemporary celebrations of this holiday tell us about consumer behavior. In Halloween rituals non-family members provide gifts to masked and anonymous children who pose a vague menace. In Christmas rituals gifts are exchanged within the family and each is personally and lovingly acknowledged. In- Halloween rituals children leave home and family to join other children for an evening of pranks in order to obtain unwholesome sweets in a decidedly nonreligious atmosphere. In Christmas rituals the extended family meets for a day of feasting (on wholesome foods) with a traditionally religious focus. In contemporary Halloween celebrations, American children wear costumes (often of "evil" beings) and extort treats of nondurable goods from adults with threats of property destruction. In the contemporary American Christmas celebration adults wear costumes (of Santa Claus) and extort good behavior from children with threats that rewards of durable goods will be withheld (Belk 1987, 1989). Halloween is a little studied consumption holiday that is in several significant respects a mirror image of the other major American consumption holiday: Christmas. HALLOWEEN: AN EVOLVING AMERICAN CONSUMPTION RITUAL Pollay, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 508-517.Īdvances in Consumer Research VolPages 508-517 Belk (1990) ,"Halloween: an Evolving American Consumption Ritual", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 17, eds.
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