Potatoes and turnips were the original Jack-O-Lanterns. Irish children would carve and light them to use during the gatherings on Halloween.
Trick or treating had its roots in Europe. The custom known as "souling" dates back to the 9th century. On All Soul's Day which is November 2nd, the poor would walk through the villages and go door to door begging for food. They would be given "soul cakes" which is a type of pastry made from bread and currants. They would promise to pray for dead relatives in return for receiving the "soul cakes".
Halloween is the number two holiday in terms of commercial success. It's no surprise that Christmas is number one. Over four billion dollars is spent annually during the Halloween season. The majority of that money is spent on costumes, candy, parties, and decorations.
Approximately two billion dollars is spent annually on Halloween candy in the United States.
Illinois, California, New York, and Ohio produce more than 100 million pounds of pumpkins each year. These states are U.S. leaders in pumpkin growing.
The National Confectioners Association reports that 80 percent of adults in America give out candy to trick-or-treaters, and that 93 percent of children go trick-or-treating.
Halloween - The Movie (1978)
The character of Michael Myers was named after the European distributor of Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13 as a kind of weird "thank you" for the film's overseas success.
The original script, titled "The Babysitter Murders", had the events take place over the space of several days. It was a budgetary decision to change the script to have everything happen on the same day (doing this reduced the number of costume changes and locations required) and it was decided that Halloween, the scariest night of the year, was the perfect night for this to happen.
This was voted the fifth scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
As the movie was actually shot in early spring in southern California (as opposed to Illinois in late October), the crew had to buy paper leaves from a decorator and paint them in the desired autumn colors, then scatter them in the filming locations.
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