A treat for you: 13 fun facts about Halloween

Halloween is my favorite holiday besides Christmas. It’s a holiday beyond just a day on the calendar, with many ways to celebrate it throughout the whole month of October. Spooky decorations, creative costumes, carving pumpkins after visiting a pumpkin farm with all the Halloween fun surrounding a haunted corn maze, gobs of candy and holiday-themed treats, watching scary movies, and reading spooky stories. By the way, have you read my ghost story, 1313 Psycho Path? It’s a short story and the eBook is only 99 cents.

If you’re not into the spookiness of the holiday, what’s great about Halloween is that it can be tapered down for anyone to enjoy the season. With fall decorations, cute costumes, walks through a pumpkin patch, watching fun Halloween movies like Hocus Pocus, reading fall-themed books and, of course, you can still enjoy the candy and treats!

In the spirit of the holiday, I thought I’d share some fun facts about Halloween. So as a treat, since there are plenty of tricks to be had, here are 13 fun facts you may or may not know about Halloween:

1. Does your hometown celebrate Halloween with enthusiasm?

If you enjoy the holiday, it might be worth it someday to visit two cities that are self-proclaimed Halloween capitals of the world: Salem, Massachusetts and Anoka, Minnesota. Check them out. The list of Halloween happenings in both cities is amazing.

2. Did you know there’s a record for the most carved pumpkins lit at once?

The record to be beat was 30,128 held by Boston, Massachusetts in 2006, which was finally broken by the city of Keene, New Hampshire in 2013, with a record-breaking 30,581 lit carved pumpkins. Since Keene was the original record holder when this feat first began, I imagine they were glad to have their title back.

3. Carving pumpkins can be as easy or difficult as you make it…

…depending on the pattern you decide on, but imagine carving your design on the smaller shape of a turnip or a potato instead. That’s what the first Jack-o’-lanterns were made from.

4. There’s a phobia for pretty much everything.

And Halloween is no exception. Anyone who is extremely fearful of Halloween has the phobia known as Samhainophobia.

5. Do you grow pumpkins in your garden?

Then you probably know they are classified as a fruit, not a vegetable. That’s a large piece of fruit! And do you know which state has declared the pumpkin as their state fruit? That would be New Hampshire.

6. Been to a county fair lately to see a record holder?

You might have spotted an entry for the largest pumpkin in your area sporting an award after its weigh-in. Of course, there’s also a Guinness World Record for the heaviest pumpkin, which is held by someone from Belgium with a pumpkin that weighed in at 2,624 pounds in 2016. That’s almost the weight of my youngest son’s car!

In case you’re wondering, people do take on the difficult task of carving from a large pumpkin. That world record goes to a man who spent eight hours carving a jack-o’-lantern from a pumpkin that weighed 2,350 pounds. This hobby is no joke.

7. You may or may not have watched the movie Halloween, but I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

There are a few interesting facts about the making of this movie: it was originally titled the Babysitter Murders, it was filmed in less than month and the movie was on a very tight budget. The budget was so tight (couple hundred thousand) that many actors wore their own clothes and the mask worn by the serial killer was purchased from a costume shop for less than $2.00 (a Captain Kirk mask slightly altered for the movie). The fact that the premiere in October 1978 grossed over $70 million after spending so little on the film is incredible.

8. Consumers spend money on movies and so much more.

This probably isn’t surprising, but after Christmas, Halloween is the second highest grossing commercial holiday. In 2020, when trick-or-treating had special rules due to the pandemic, a total of eight billion dollars was spent by consumers. This year? It’s expected that consumer spending will exceed ten billion dollars, which is an all-time high.

9. Why wear a Halloween costume?

Children of all ages look forward to trick-or-treating, with only the knowledge that wearing a costume allows them to collect a lot of candy. A fun fact relating to the history of this holiday involves the Celtic tradition of dressing up as ghouls, demons and spirits in order to disguise themselves. They believed that with a disguise, it would allow them to escape being noticed by the real spirits who would be wandering the streets during Halloween.

10. Do you enjoy bonfires during the fall season?

Ever imagine the word ‘bonfire’ had any relation to Halloween? There seem to be many stories around the origin of the bonfire, such as pre-Halloween bonfire celebrations, and Halloween bonfires, lit to guarantee the sun would return after winter or to ward off evil spirits. Whatever origin you relate to, the stories share how bones were tossed into the fire, making it a fire of bones, or bonefire, which later became bonfire.

11. Kids aren’t counting calories, but maybe they should be.

Going trick-or-treating was a fun activity when my boys were young, but I might have had a different view if I knew this little fact: apparently the average bag of candy a child might gather during their Halloween jaunt can contain up to 11,000 calories. I don’t think I want to know just how many grams of sugar that might also include!

12. Speaking of candy, what’s your favorite?

I love Mounds with dark chocolate, but after trick-or-treating with the boys, I was happy to snag a package of Twix or a box of Milk Duds. There’s an interesting story about how Milk Duds were created and how they got their name. I guess the creator of the candy made an attempt to form perfect circles, but the candies would not form round balls so he called them ‘duds.’ A large amount of milk was used to make the candy, so they became Milk Duds.

13. Have you heard of laws still on the books and wonder about the origin or why they are still in place?

One example comes from Alabama, where it’s illegal to play dominoes on a Sunday, or Connecticut where it’s illegal for farmers to sell pickles at markets. I thought it was interesting that there are laws in various states pertinent to Halloween. Some examples include a California city requiring a permit to wear a mask, a city in Missouri making it illegal for anyone over the age of 13 to ask for candy, and the fact that it’s illegal to dress up as a priest or nun in Alabama. There was also apparently a law in a city in Georgia which made it illegal to wear a mask, sunglasses or any other facial covering anytime during the year, although Halloween was the exception.  Of course, I imagine the pandemic switched things up with any state laws relating to masks, especially if those laws prevented people from legally wearing masks.

And that’s my list of 13 fun facts related to Halloween. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and I wish you a spook-tacular and faBOOlous Halloween!