The growth of Halloween over the years has been remarkable — and a little wild to behold. Many of the current Express staff are fans of the spooky season going way back, as many of you have likely noticed, and we can’t help but feel every now and then like an odd — if appropriate — transformation has happened to the season.

Halloween is bigger than it has ever been, with the National Retail Foundation seeing just over $12 billion in sales in 2023. They are expecting around the same amount again in 2024, with around $4 billion of that being candy sales.

According to an article from CNN from Oct. 26, 2000, total Halloween sales were $6.8 billion, drawing from 1999 numbers — that’s 25 years ago, for a bonus scare.

Some of that is likely inflation — numbers are bigger post-COVID — but it is hard to deny the creeping growth of your neighborhood goth’s favorite holiday.

“Back in the day,” Halloween was more or less one day of frenetic trick-or-treating, with events at school leading into an hour or two of being toured around and shown off to family members before finally getting to the main event: going door-to-door at various neighborhoods in your local community.

Somewhere along the way, that one day morphed into a few weeks of Trunk-or-Treats; as well as increasingly populated parades and increasingly intricate, and expensive, displays of decorations.

And now, that few weeks has morphed even further, with 12-foot-tall-skeleton frenzies beginning well over a month before Halloween Day.

The Christmas comparison, of course, is right there — companies more or less ran out of new ways to monetize that holiday years ago, so it makes sense they would seek greener, or perhaps blacker, pastures.

More remarkable, though, is their success. Halloween, or at least this type of obsession with it, was always kind of the weird kid’s thing when we were growing up — we say as weird kids ourselves, we would like to emphasize.

Weird kids grow up, though, and get jobs, and have spending power… and now, younger generations will think it’s always been this way.

It’s odd, that subversion of the subversive. But, ultimately, isn’t that cyclical change fitting for the season?

Go forth, spooky kids and honorary spooky kids. This is your time.