Halloween is blowing up because childhood is leaking further and further into adult life, and millennials in particular aren’t fully sold on the idea that they’re grown-ups. Candy? Costumes? Silly pranks? These things should gradually start losing interest for you about the time you learn what a 401(k) is. Instead, childish behavior is losing all connotations of being embarrassing.
Video games — sales of which hit an all-time high of $30.6 billion last year — as well as the increasing popularity of cosplay (dressing up in costumes the other 364 days of the year), comic-book conventions, superhero movies and fantasy sports are all symptoms of what Andersen dubs “Kids ‘R’ Us Syndrome”: We’re losing our collective sense of when it’s time to put away childish things.
Halloween is simply the night when it’s most socially acceptable to act 11. Or dress up like Eleven, the telekinetic girl from “Stranger Things.” Halloween is also an intensely visual holiday, which means it appeals to the millennial obsession with broadcasting to the world everything they do on Instagram and YouTube.
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