Halloween: An Evolving American Consumption Ritual By Russell W. Belk

Halloween is theoretically the most dangerous holiday celebrated in America. The practice of trick-or-treat allows criminals the opportunity to hurt children by tampering with their Halloween sweets. For decades, many Americans have understood that this traditional practice of door to door candy collection was absolutely unsafe, and still many today aim to abolish it completely. Nevertheless, they have failed to recognize that theoretical dangers do not always apply to real life scenarios. For example, Black Friday shopping poses as more of a danger than Halloween due to the excessive traffic, colder weather conditions, and larger crowds of people; yet, people still participate in the event. As for Halloween, the children can participate in an activity to collect free candy under lesser hardships, such as being involved

In the article “Halloween: an Evolving American Consumption Ritual”, Russell W. Belk, a professor of marketing at the University of Utah, explained that the real source of the scare came about during and after the Vietnam War era. In addition to his explanation, Belk wrote: Halloween treat rumors have actually flourished because we felt surrounded by non-actionable threats with the U.S. loss in Vietnam, the Arab oil embargo, increased crime, the Tylenol poisonings, and increased reports of various forms of child abuse. As a reference, the Tylenol poisonings were a series of events that occurred in Chicago of 1982 when multitudes of people died from traces of laced potassium cyanide in regular Tylenol bottles. In retrospect, Halloween used to be celebrated without severe warning up until U.S. loss in the Vietnam War. Of course, the Tylenol poisonings brought into realization that the dangers of tampering that were yet to be mitigated may lurk into other common products, such as