The cost is spooky: Halloween is the second biggest commercial holiday in the U.S.

It’s October, or as I like to call it, the month of Halloween. The fact that Halloween is now the second biggest commercial holiday in the U.S. boggles my boomer mind. According to the National Retail Federation, last year more than $10 billion was spent on costumes, decorations and, of course, 5-pound bags of snack-size Snickers bars.

I remember when the biggest Halloween expenditure was on those horrible hard plastic face masks where you could barely see and breathing seemed optional because the nose holes were so small they were a millimeter away from being non-existent.

Then there was the issue that the masks made your face sweat like a polar bear doing hot yoga. Never mind that the 1960s and ’70s plastic masks were loaded with chemicals like BPA and phthalates, and we as children were energetically inhaling the off-gassing as we trick-or-treated for hours without a parent in sight. Good times, right?

I think all that off-gassing might have affected my brain because years later, here I am spending $40 on a single “fairy tale” pumpkin and another $30 on a “blue prince.” This definitely puts me on team “blow a bunch of money on Halloween.”

Although I’d like to point out that I’m only into a cute Halloween vibe. This means I have zero interest in any of the fright night adventures or scary movies. The thought of willingly paying to see a man “swallow” a rat or spending money to venture inside an “abandoned” building so a cadre of strangers can jump out and scare me with the intent of making me wet my pants gets a resounding hard pass from me.

Also, once you reach a certain age it takes a lot to scare you. Forget about zombies. If you want to make me scream in horror, have a contractor tell me my house has extensive dry rot or that I need a new foundation. Those two scenarios will make me howl with a bone-chilling ferocity.

As for scary movies: yuck. I just saw the trailer to the new exorcist remake, “Believer,” and it looked disgusting. Honestly, I’d rather have a colonoscopy because it would take less time than sitting through that two-hour film.

Who needs all that gore anyway, because although it’s been decades since my last childhood trick-or-treat outing I still think Halloween is all about the candy. Reese’s, Hershey bars, Snickers, M&M’s: It’s a yummy sucrose-laden paradise with an all-access pass to gorge yourself for at least one day until you take a hard turn at Stomachache Lane.

Please note I didn’t mention candy corn because it’s the most overrated of all the Halloween treats. First, it’s not chocolate and second, it’s just pure sugar with no flavor nuances. You might as well take the bag of sugar from your pantry, pour it into your mouth and then throw back a couple of stale marshmallows. Boom: candy corn.

One thing my brain still can’t process is parents who try to intervene in the gluttony and give their children the choice of a present if they surrender their candy bags on Nov. 1. My kids would never have agreed to that, and as a parent I needed my kids’ trick-or-treat haul to sustain me while they were at school.

The fascinating part was that my kids — who could never manage to remember where they put their shoes, backpacks, etc. — had every piece of their Halloween candy memorized.

God forbid their loving mother take a mini Milky Way bar. Honestly, I think it set them both up for their jobs in finance and data analytics.

So the way I see it, Halloween is an investment in your child’s future. I think I’ll celebrate that by having a full size Snicker’s bar.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.