KBTV4.tv - Beaumont,TX,USA

Happy Halloween !
( Air Date: 10/31/2005 )

Halloween is a holiday for everyone -- kids and adults alike. In fact, 54 percent of consumers feel that Halloween is becoming even more popular for adults.

Twenty-eight percent of adults plan to dress up this year, as compared to 20 percent last year.

The festivities are even spreading to the office.

Over half of U.S. workers say their employers will allow them to observe Halloween in the workplace, and 39 percent will consider wearing a costume to work. It seems that next to Christmas, Halloween is shaping up to be the most popular holiday in America, and we spend an amazing amount of money celebrating it.

Here are some interesting figures:

....Candy sales are expected to reach $1.8 billion this year.

....Costume sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion.

....Sales of home decorations, pumpkins and party paraphernalia are expected to reach $2.5 billion.

....There`s been a 21 percent increase in Halloween shopping budgets -- consumers this year will spend an average of $98 per household, up from $91 last year.

....The average family will spend $30 on candy, $22 on costumes, $16 on pumpkins and $30 on all kinds of other Halloween stuff.

Here are some fun facts about one of the scariest times of the year -- Halloween:

....Black cats are a symbol of Halloween because it was once believed that souls could travel back into the world of the living in the body of an animal -- usually a black cat.

....Halloween marks the modern witches` New Year`s eve.
It is a time spent celebrating death, fertility and renewal.

....Halloween is believed to be the time when the dead and other demonic creatures rise to walk the earth once more.

....The ancient Celtic fire festival called "Samhain" (sow in) is the origin of modern Halloween. This festival was the feast of the dead in Pagan and Christian times, marking the close of harvest and the initiation of the winter season.

....The tradition of witches riding their brooms isn`t just because they were the handiest flight objects available. The broomstick is symbolic of the magical powers of females, because it is employed in the cleansing of ritual places.

...."Hallow" is an old word meaning holy, whilst "e`en" is Scottish for evening.

....It is estimated that between the 15th to 18th centuries, approximately two million people were executed for witchcraft, 80 percent of this number were women.

A historian says while much of Halloween is a product of the 20th century the holiday also has roots that go back thousands of years.

Purdue University Historian Melinda Zook says the ideas for Halloween date back to ancient Rome where people celebrated a Fall harvest festival. She says while the roots of Halloween also date back to Germanic pagan rituals the holiday also shows up in medieval Christian culture as a day when souls went to either purgatory or paradise.

Zook says the "trick or treat" tradition of Halloween dates back to Ireland where peasants went door to door for gifts. She says much of what we in America consider to be Halloween came about in the early 20th century and was in large part derived from the modern American tradition of consumer marketing.

The Halloween we know today with kids going door-to-door to trick or treat is only about 70 years old. Historically, however, Halloween has it`s roots in the Pagan-Celtic holiday known as Samhain , a festival with bonfires that celebrated the end of summer.
Dr. Edmund Kern, a history professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, says In the Pagan culture it was thought that at this time of year the boundaries between the material and spiritual worlds were especially permeable and that the dead could return to seek vengeance on the living. While the celebrants engaged in sacrifices to placate the dead, scholars have discounted the notion that there were any human sacrifices.
Dr. Kern says Halloween became a secular holiday in the late 19th century.
The holiday really took off after World War II when children dressed up in things that were thought to be scary.

Images of witches, goblins and ghosts, he says, really did not become part of the celebration until the modern era. Kern says it would be a mistake to draw a direct line between the Celtic holiday of old and the Halloween that is celebrated today.

Just in time for Halloween, it turns out several western cities top the list for scariest ghost towns in the nation. According to "USA Today," the most frightening ghost town is in Bodie, California, followed by the creepy town of Thurmond, West Virginia.

The ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada which is located outside of Death Valley National Park is rated third on the spook scale.

A spooky ghost town in Custer, Idaho, and the icy town of Flagstaff Lake, Maine give you enough chills to round out the newspaper`s top five scary ghost towns.