What if America becomes majority irreligious, and Halloween eclipses Christmas?

marathag

marathag

Banned
Mad Bad Rabbit said:
There was a famous PSA (Public Service Ad) on Earth Day in 1973 showing an American Indian riding, canoeing and walking through various polluted landscapes; and shedding a single dramatic tear when a car drives by and throws trash out the window. The voiceover: "People started pollution. People can stop it."

[ and of course the actor turned out to not be a real American Indian because this was the 1970s ]
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In the late '60- 1970s, it was true, trash was everywhere.
Like after eating at McDonald's, was common just to toss the bag of trash out the window.
'Street Sweepers will take care of it' till malaise sunk in, with budget cuts to the sanitation department. So trash everywhere and graffiti.
'Give a Hoot, don't Pollute' one of the early PSA from 1971, before the Indian
 
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walmart

Goats-&-Bolts said:
But I wouldn’t say a scenario where the 2 holidays switched their ranking in the capitalist order is ASB.
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In the US alone , Christmas retail sales were nearly one trillion. Unless people start buying Xboxes for their kids on Halloween. I don’t see that happening.
 

dfl_90

One obvious point to make is that the US has become less religious and yet Christmas is continuing to become a more expansive holiday, so the conclusion in the OP probably doesn't follow.

Christmas has a few key advantages over Halloween. One is that often requires more preparation and planning due to the need to find and purchase specific gifts for specific people. Halloween doesn't have that same specificity as candy is often purchased in bulk. Costumes could potentially fill that gap as the major expense of the season, but because those are generally purchased for children and for one time use, it's difficult to generate the same sort of profits that get businesses excited for the season. Additionally, because Halloween is more of a public event where one interacts with more strangers, it's much harder to coordinate and stretch the holiday out. It's not uncommon to have several Christmas parties or gatherings during that season as different family members and friends gather. You can't quite replicate that with Halloween as most of the holiday is concentrated on one day and specifically the evening of that day. Simply put, Halloween isn't quite as easy to commercialize as Christmas.
 
durante

durante

NotStaleBread said:
So many historical determinists in this thread. Christmas, American Christmas, is not some eternal god ordained holiday that claims permanent and total hegemony over the globe or even just in America. Sure, the connection OP makes between irreligiosity and less celebration of Christmas is an erroneous one, but can none of you even begin to fathom how Halloween might become a bigger holiday than Christmas?
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With a PoD after 1900? It's not historical determinism its basic historical knowledge.

Now, Thanksgiving becoming bigger than Christmas in a non-religious USA is a possibility...

But Halloween isnt even a Holiday.
 

NotStaleBread

kholieken said:
Trick and treating has been declined in America for decades, Halloween increasingly become sexy costume party for adults.
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If that is a genuine statistic and not just an anecdotal claim, that's disappointing personally, but doesn't really weaken my point. Even if you're right and the demographic appeal is shifting from children to adult, that does not fundamentally alter the fact of the matter that the traditional methods through which people participate in Halloween, whether they be costume parties or trick-or-treating, are more limited in their broad public appeal than traditional Christmas activities. This isn't to say Halloween activities are not appealing, just not as much as Christmas ones. If we want a Halloween that has the potential to usurp Christmas, we'd need to alter and/or expand the number of things people would do for it. Of course, another aspect is that we can enhance the appeal of the activities already associated with it as well. For example, making America more walkable and less car-dependent would do well in increasing the number of trick-or-treaters. Making American culture have stronger connections with horror, the supernatural, spirits, and the like, would increase the appeal of people participating in these things s well.
 

DougM

Christmas has two things happening at the same time. The two are interconnected and born from the same starting point. The Christian holiday.
the first thing is still the Christian holiday itself. The second thing happening is that Christmas has became a holiday where we reunite and celebrate wuth out Family and dear friends. We give them gifts to express our feeling that we normaly suppress the rest of the year. We eat well and spend time at get togethers and parties with with those that are close to us. We often travel or at least contact our family and or friends that are far from us.
Christmas has became as much a season as a day. It starts with Thanksgiving, peaks with Christmas and finally ends on New Years.
This has little to nothing yo do with the Christian holiday. Other then the obvious that it is derived from the Christain Holiday. And arguably is part of the Christian Celebration as well.
This trend started before 1900 so unless you kill off Christianity by 1920 completely you are probably not going to kill off Christmas in the Santa/Gifts/parties and Family sense.

Halloween also derives from a religious holiday but its connections are less obvious today and have long hern eclipsed in the US with the spooky/party/candy bit. The problem with trying yo make Halloween bigger then Christmas (even is you all but eliminate Christianity by 1920) is that the holiday is just not about the same thing, It is about spookiness not sentimentality and family.
You can decrease Christmas but you cant get Holloween to be as big/popular as Christmas is currently. It just is mot the right type of holiday.
As someone else noted Thanksgiving as celebrated in the US could perhaps have became the big holiday much like Christmas did in that it also is about family food and friends. It is harder to get it going as it did not start from a large religious holiday so it did not start off with a lot of momentum. It had been struggling for a long time before it took off. And it could be. argued that it didnt really take off until the 70s or 80s. I knew a LOT of people that did mot get Friday off. And thier was talk back then about moving it yo a Friday in order to connect it yo the weekend. And note i am not talking about only retail workers. I know a lot of office workers and more then a fee manufacturing jobs that did not get Friday off until the 90s. So Thanks giving was a slow starter compared to where Christmas was.
So while Thanksgiving could probably become the big Holiday I don't think Halloween can become that large. It is just not the same type of thing. I know non christian asians and Jewish families that celibrate the Family/food/friends aspect of Christmas simply because that part of the holiday is inherently just something people can relate to.
Ghost and goblins? No so much..
Look at Christmas movies va Halloween movies. We get a Wonderfull Life and White Christmas vs “Halloween”….

-Doug M
 

Cryptic

Mad Bad Rabbit said:
There was a famous PSA (Public Service Ad) on Earth Day in 1971 showing an American Indian riding, canoeing and walking through various polluted landscapes; and shedding a single dramatic tear when a car drives by and throws trash out the window. The voiceover: "People started pollution. People can stop it."

[ and of course the actor turned out to not be a real American Indian because this was the 1970s ]
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Thanks. I remember spinoffs of that ad as a child. I even imagined seeing the native American / but not native American on horseback, overlooking an interstate when my family drove through Kansas. I mean.... he always had plains indian clothing on- right?
 

Don Corleone

I once heard a homily by an immigrant from Cuba where he said "we didn't get Santa on the 24th. We got the three wise men on January 6." Also had a German immigrant tell me that even after being in the US for over 50 years, it still felt strange for Santa to come on Christmas Eve instead on December 6.

Just have the big gifting day be either the Epiphany or the feast day of St. Nicholas, and the Nativity would be equivalent to the Assumption.
 

Falecius

Don Corleone said:
I once heard a homily by an immigrant from Cuba where he said "we didn't get Santa on the 24th. We got the three wise men on January 6." Also had a German immigrant tell me that even after being in the US for over 50 years, it still felt strange for Santa to come on Christmas Eve instead on December 6.

Just have the big gifting day be either the Epiphany or the feast day of St. Nicholas, and the Nativity would be equivalent to the Assumption.
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In many parts of Italy, the traditional big gift giving day is St. Lucy's Day (December 13). Which is not a holiday here though.
The result now can be at times that kids, at least, may receive some gifts on Dec 13, bigger ones on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and some more at Epiphany (also quite a big deal in Italy, where it is a holiday and the official end of the Season). In my family, the tradition of gift exchange both at Christmas and Epiphany runs very strong (while St. Lucy, albeit still quite felt in my family for specific reasons, isn't a traditional gift-bringer in our region).
I'd also note that Halloween is also rooted in a religious (Christian) festivity too (The Eve of All Saint's Day, quite an important recurrence in the Catholic calendar).
 

kholieken

Banned
Mad Bad Rabbit said:
Perhaps Dia de Los Muertos takes over from Halloween as a less secular more family-oriented holiday but still with spookiness and confectionary
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These is good ideas that hopefully will happen in future. It could be 3 days, from oct 31 to nov 2. With more festive hispanic atmosphere making it more interesting.
 

Pauh the federalist

Since Christmas music starts the second holloween is over and sometimes even lingers through January otl i prepose that its only fair this alt holloween starts the second summer is over in late August or early September and linger into November as each year that goes by it encroaches further into thanksgivings tarritory threatening to one day annex the whole fall seasion as holloweens rightful clay. 🎃 🧙‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ 🧛‍♂️ 🦇 🌕 (while this post is particularly memeing a more popular holloween would absolutely see a longer build up and probably see meny of the decorations stay up longer into November becuse holloween and thanksgiving share a similer astetic and color palate that makes meny decorations interchangeable (pumpkins, candles, cornstalks ect) that give plenty of people an excuse to just leave the decorations up through November.)
 
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