Reclaiming Halloween

Beyond sugar and plastic body parts: advice from 3 experts

Photo by Simon Berger via Unsplash

Halloween is my least favorite Hallmark holiday. To me, it feels jarringly out of sync with the earthly season. As an animist and someone who has real, living relationships with the dead, modern commercial Halloween is like a bizarre farce, a comic book abstraction of the real thin veil time of year. Now that I’m a parent and I am pulled to do something with my child beyond watching my dreams intensify or talking to my ancestors more, I’ve been seeking alternatives to the horror movie/candy milieu that is Halloween.

I’ve played with ideas like having a post box for the dead on our lawn (still looking for an old post box!) or creating an installation devoted to the fae, but every year since becoming a parent I have done what the whole neighborhood seems to be doing… trick or treating and big block parties. And every year my Halloween hangover has gotten worse. No alcohol involved. Initially, I thought I was just the neighborhood's resident grumpy witch. Then I discovered I wasn't alone. Many parents, even those without spiritual inclinations, confessed their own Halloween disdain to me last year : "It's not fun at all," "The kids just go crazy then melt down," "We don't usually let them have sugar so the whole thing is a nightmare.”

To understand this cultural phenomenon better, and find some practical ways that parents and sensitive/spiritual folks can reclaim the holiday, I interviewed three experts. All work professionally with death, grief, ritual, and seasonal cycles. They reflected on the state of mainstream commercial Halloween and offered some practical (and kid friendly!) suggestions for bringing meaning back to the season.

The Problem with Modern Halloween

While autumn naturally invites us to contemplate death and our relationship with the dead, that's rarely what modern Halloween practices are doing. All three experts spoke to this disconnect:

"It breaks my heart, because our society is so de-sensitized, we are so death phobic. No one wants to touch their grief," says Willow Meili, a grief facilitator and death doula at The Grief Well Village. "Everything is being pushed down and then we have this one day (Halloween) every year. The commercial holiday is very intense. The decor feels very violent to me."

A house on my block. I do not like it.

Eshu Martin, former Abbot of Zenwest Buddhist Society, now owner of Monarch Trancework, confirms this cultural aversion to death:

“There’s so much about trying to move on. We don’t acknowledge death very well. I got frustrated working in hospice with the lack of funeral practices and how we want to do celebrations of life, but we don't particularly do…THAT THEY DIE. We want to just bypass that fact and that with a person dying, we die, because our identities are composed of relationships. And when any relationship dies, the whole unit needs to be sort of restructured."

Sacred deathcare practitioner and teacher, Sarah Kerr, notes the form this disconnection takes on Halloween:

"We don't have relationships with real death and dying so we over-stimulate the nervous system in relationship with artificial death."

She also points out a fundamental energetic mismatch,"Sugar is such an up energy and Samhain is such a down and dark kind energy. It becomes about getting which is also the opposite of fall, which is about releasing and letting go of what is no longer. So there is a lot of grabbing more as opposed to letting go. The kids are trying to get as much candy as they can, and the parents are in service of that."

Lost Traditions and Facing Fear

"In English scientific church-based culture, there's a real blanket 'bad' about things like spirits,” Eshu (a Gaelic speaker) shares, "In Gaelic culture, there's lots of stories where at this time of year it was understood that the veil was thin and that you may be visited by family members. And that wasn't a bad thing at all, really. They might show up and have a drink and stay till morning and then go. You have this opportunity to sort of see people who were lost at war, who weren't able to come home or people who were lost at sea fishing. They weren't evil because they were dead. There was also this relationship with the Sidhe, the fairies, and when that barrier was down, that could be tricky, you know?”

Fear is a big theme at this time of year. Fear of death, the dark, our own shadow sides, and perhaps even our sensitivity to the presence of the dead. As with death, Halloween might cultivate a superficial relationship with fear.

“The way that our materialist culture has dealt with the legitimate and valuable psychological, emotional, spiritual dynamic of working with fear is through distraction, making light of it, making things silly, or turning it into something sexy. We're not really dealing with fear at this point,” Eshu says.

Yet, Halloween as a great opportunity to cultivate generosity with what scares us in ourselves and the outside world. This is a teaching that Eshu also shares with kids about the deeper aspects of trick or treating:

When something scary knocks on your door, what do you do? Do you turn out the lights and run away or pretend you're not home? Do you fight with it? Tell it to get off your porch or do you sort of meet it and really see that the what these beings are coming for is that they're hungry?

When these beings come to your door, how do we meet them? Well, we meet them with generosity and kindness and friendliness. So when our own sort of scary stuff comes up, when our own ghosts, or the ghosts of our family, or the demons that are sort of attracted to us come, do we meet them with fear? Do we sort of try to block them out? Or do we face them and try to shift the relationship through compassion and generosity?"

Meaningful alternatives

I have deep gratitude to Willow, Sarah, and Eshu for offering a fountain of ways to reclaim Halloween season and pass it on to my daughter. If you are a parent, try just doing one thing differently so it’s not overwhelming.

1. Extended Ritual Practice

Willow stretches ancestral connection and death contemplation beyond October 31:

"I set up a death altar in the beginning of October. We practice ritual for the entire month, on that altar and around the altar every day. Whether it's just lighting a candle every day for our people, our kin, known and unknown or more elaborate things."

2. Community Connection

Sarah Kerr and her friends create a "Nervous System Regulation Station" on October 31, offering hot apple cider and community connection without violent imagery or disembodied limbs. I like this idea: become the ground, offer something kind and calm that facilitates neighborly connections, a place to pause from the frenzy. Sarah also appreciates how costumes can equalize people and help them break from worldly identities—a perspective that also reminds me of Halloween's historical importance as a safe day for fluid gender expression (more on the history of Halloween for crossdressers in This Body I Wore by Diana Goetsch).

3. Year-Round Death Awareness

Winnie the skeleton in different seasons

Willow maintains a playful relationship with death awareness throughout the year:

"We have a life-size plastic skeleton that we bought years ago at a yard sale and she lives in our house all time. She gets dressed up and moved around from room to room all year. It's not even about Halloween, it's funny and it's about normalizing death for my daughter."

4. Dumb Supper

Eshu reminded me that this time of year a great time to do a dumb supper. It’s a simple ritual in which the living set an extra place at the table and offer food for the ancestors, because at this time of year the veil between our world and theirs is thinner. What makes this ritual particularly powerful is a listening focus:

"Once the meal starts, it's silent. Like nobody talks, and you listen because those beings are coming to the supper, and they may have something to tell you,” Eshu says.

5. Do something different on Samhain

Samhain is the halfway point between autumn equinox and winter solstice, that marks a turn toward winter and the darker part of the year. This year it falls on November 6. Whether you have kids or not, you might contemplative and ritual spaces may feel more accessible after October 31.

Eshu: “For me, it (community ritual) was never on Halloween because I was just aware that the world is kind of doing Halloween on Halloween. That was okay because realistically, Samhain is actually November 6th. It's an astrological phenomenon, not a calendar oriented phenomenon.”

6. Seasonal Altar

It is a simple thing just to have an altar in your house that reflects the season and honors the spirits of the season. As Samhain turns toward the dark part of the year for those in the northern hemisphere, you may want to change the altar around this time.

A slightly less grumpy witch

This year, I notice there are a few less bloody plastic body parts hanging from trees in my neighborhood. I wonder if a year of genocide has sobered those of us who rarely have to touch death, a little at least. Perhaps a culture shift is already underway. Maybe we're beginning to shift from treating death as titillating entertainment to something real that deserves our attention and respect.

I followed Willow’s advice to start an altar sooner in the month and engage it with my little one. We have a low table at her height with some photos of our ancestors on it and we go for fall walks to find leaves and flowers to put on the altar. We call them signs of fall, or things the ancestors would like. Starting this altar early, I already feel less pressure as a ritualist parent to pack in meaning right around the days of Halloween and Samhain.

Dear readers, I’m so curious how you relate to Halloween and if you have ever tried to bring in new rituals for yourself or family.

If the big commercial holidays grate on you like they do me, I wonder what kind of reclamation are your bones singing for? What is the reclamation that your heart would open toward? Please share any and all in the comments - it takes hive mind and courageous hearts to reclaim these holidays.

I am glad to be exploring together.

Save the Date: May 2-4, 2025

With Brooke Rochette on a break at Tending the Writer’s Flame

The October 5-6 Tending the Writer’s Flame on W̱SÁNEĆ territory just outside Victoria, BC was a fantastic full gathering of 19 wild and wonderful writers. The days passed with forest wanders, myth steeping, sun soaked sentences, and snappy spells and I was honored to co-hold the space and see the well of joy and healing that emerged.

We rescheduled our next gathering to land right before Beltane. We will be gathering May 2-4, 2025 in Nanaimo, BC (residential and non-residential options available). There will be 20 spaces available and we expect to fill up. To be the first to hear when registration opens, get on the writer’s flame email list:

Appreciating

1. Fabulous episode from Animisma on Samhain, focussing on medicinal and magical use of plants at this turn of the wheel of the year:

2. Heidi Parkes’ Scavenger Hunt structured improv quilt making! Quilting from these prompts reminds me so much of creating choreography in rooms full of dancers. I love it. Quilting is also a way that I connect to my ancestors extra, so I’m loving it this season.

3. A great book for kids age 3-6 about grief. My little one loves it: Just What To Do by Kyle Lukoff

4. Scottish artist Lucy Campbell’s dreamy creations

5. This Body I Wore by Diana Goetsch takes the reader right into the New York crossdressing scene in the 80s and 90s all the way up to her gender transition around age 50. It is a beauty of a memoir.

With love,