“Halloween is still the only night America tells the truth”
An OPINION By: Johanna Elattar
Halloween did not begin as entertainment.
It began as Samhain, an ancient Gaelic event marking the death of summer — and the return of darkness. It was the night when the living acknowledged the dead directly, not symbolically. Fires were lit. Food was offered. The dead were respected because they were believed to be present. It was not cute. It was not ornamental. It was spiritual survival.
Then came the Puritans — who banned it.
Anything that smelled of spirits, ritual, or the old world was called demonic. For over a century, Halloween disappeared on American soil. No costumes. No pumpkins. No children knocking on doors. Just suspicion and silence.
Halloween only re-emerged in the mid-1800s when Irish immigrants — driven out by famine — arrived in America and brought Samhain back with them. But now it collided with American soil, and America never absorbs something without extracting and rebranding it.
Newspapers from the late 1800s show the transformation beginning:
– Irish street mischief turned into child “pranks.”
– Bonfires became organized town parties.
– Fear of spirits became “wholesome autumn festivities.”
By the early 20th century, Halloween had been softened — made “civic,” “American,” and safe for the rising white middle class. But it still had bite. Doors were rattled. Property was vandalized. Police were called. America had a problem: people were pouring energy into chaos — and capitalism needed control.
So the country did what it always does when it wants obedience:
It sold an alternative.
Candy companies stepped in. Department stores stepped in. Costume catalogs arrived.
And by the 1950s suburban boom, Halloween had fully transformed into what it is today:
a choreographed national ritual of consumption.
No longer a night of spiritual reckoning.
Now a night of economic compliance — dressed up as freedom.
But here is the part no one says aloud:
Halloween is still the only night America tells the truth.
For one night, Americans stop curating their image and show people what they actually want to be — or what they deeply fear. The holiday is not about death. It’s about permission.
Every costume is a confession.
– The blood.
– The seduction.
– The power fantasy.
– The victim fantasy.
– The woman who shows up as what she is never allowed to be.
– The man who reveals the thing he would never admit he wants.
Other nations honor their dead.
America performs its repressed appetites.
Even the fake blood is honest.
Halloween didn’t survive because it is spooky.
It survived because it is the one ritual Americans obey without resistance.
No sermons. No moralizing. No ideology. Just raw hunger, safely legalized.
And for one night —
the masks are the truth,
and the faces are the lie.
Johanna Elattar is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Oxford University Press anthology and international outlets.
