Halloween not strictly a kids’ fun day

Whenever Halloween nears, I always feel the urge to rush to the store and stock up on the carload of candy I’ll need to keep the hordes of trick-or-treaters happy.

Old habits die hard, I suppose, and the lingering belief that Halloween remains a strictly children’s affair is one I have yet to shed.

The truth is, the number of costumed kids who come knocking at my door has been dwindling for a few years now. A decade or so ago, I knew the old patterns youngsters followed as they swarmed into my neighborhood. The kids tended to move in well-defined shifts, which allowed me to pace the candy distribution from my big wooden bowl so that I never ran out before the last bewitching beggar had his or her fill. Traditionally, the little ones hit the streets with their parents around suppertime, followed by a second wave of older, unchaperoned ghouls who filed noisily through the neighborhood until about 8:30 p.m.

When that shift was over, I’d turn off the lights and officially declare the house closed for business for another season. In recent years, however, I’ve noticed that the crowds have become smaller than I remembered, and that the doorbell has stopped ringing much earlier than usual. One big, festive rush of little ones and it’s pretty much over for the night, which leaves me with more leftover Smarties and Tootsie Rolls than I know what to do with.

It doesn’t take a cultural anthropologist to explain the change, of course. Modern parents, increasingly suspicious of the real-life goblins that may be lurking in the shadows, no longer trust the streets as they had long ago. Instead of allowing their youngsters to roam unsupervised from house to house at night, they’re more inclined now to dress them up and send them off to Halloween parties in schools, friends’ homes and local recreation centers.

Yet while Halloween may have lost some of its childhood innocence over the years, its newfound allure among adults has become a retailing phenomenon. According to marketing experts, Americans have turned what used to be a single night of fun for kids into a nearly monthlong unofficial holiday that grants adults the permission to play dress-up like children and guiltlessly escape their stressful lives.

We adults now spend $7 billion a year on Halloween costumes, parties, house decorations and greeting cards. With an estimated 50 million people hosting or attending parties, Halloween has become the nation’s third-biggest adult party day, after New Year’s and Super Bowl Sunday.

And if you think we otherwise practical Mainers are immune from the clutches of this pagan-inspired fantasy craze, you’re dead wrong.

“No doubt about it, Halloween has turned into an adult event,” said Marlene “Bunni” Paulette, who opened the Castle of Costumes store in Bangor with her husband 11 years ago. “It all started with children’s costumes, but it soon turned out that the parents who came in with their kids wanted costumes for themselves, too. Adults like to fantasize more these days.”

The Paulettes now have so many adult customers, in fact, that they don’t even bother renting out children’s costumes anymore.

“Halloween is not just for kids anymore,” she said.

And I’ve got plenty of year-old trick-or-treat candy to prove it.