First Halloween Themed Thing Sighting

When did Halloween become such a big thing for adults? I know it was always a big deal for kids but now it seems like a holiday that is more geared towards adults. In the interests of full disclosure, I do have some Halloween decorations that we put up when we get closer to the right season. And, for the last several years at work, I joined with the group that would dress up for Halloween. Mostly that created a fun distraction from the boredom that was work.

Soon the pop up fireworks stores will be gone and some of the empty spaces in the strip malls filled by Halloween themed stores. Most of them will sell more adult themed items than kid costumes. Its just a little weird to me.

I forgot to mention what triggered this. We like to buy candles and room fresheners from the one big store that specializes in those things. Naturally, I ended up on their email list because it is hard to avoid that these days. They just pushed out an ad for their Halloween themed scents.

Really, their aren’t any Halloween themed scents. They just repackage things like apple and pumpkin and give it seasonally appropriate names (Vampire blood, Ghoul friend, etc). Do you really want your house to smell like Vampire Blood. Would you want to wear that as a fragrance. According to the marketing material, the fragrance notes are “blood red strawberry, midnight blooming jasmine and dark Transylvanian plum”. Guess that’s somehow different than a normal plum. So it smells like fruit and flowers which have no real connection to blood but then why you would want something that smells like blood is beyond me.

Actually, the product descriptions are pretty funny. I give their marketing team some props for creativity but I can’t believe anyone is fooled by this. There’s a candle that is supposedly “Magical vanilla, glowing amberwood and echanted pink pepper”. Would people really try and explain the difference between magical vanilla and regular vanilla. “Magical just smells better”. And what is enchanting the pink pepper?

I know they have to jump the gun to get people primed and ready to buy but Halloween is still more than three months away. Do you buy your “Wicked Vanilla Woods” candle now and wait or just light it up to see if the pepper is really enchanted? Of course the other problem is that if you wait until it is more seasonally appropriate, the Halloween stuff is already pushed off the shelves by the Christmas things. Buy now or it won’t be here.

Still, there is the part of me that wishes we just appreciated where we are a little more and not be so anxious to jump into the next season. Then again, maybe the seasonal creep has always been there but I’m just noticing it more.

Or is this the real reason why Halloween is so big among adults? I mean why grow up if you don’t have to.