Halloween Was Never About You
- Abhijeet Chauhan
- Oct 24
- 5 min read
I know how this sounds. Halloween? Really? We're going to talk about how a night of costumes and candy is somehow deeply broken?
But stay with me.
Because what I'm about to tell you isn't a lecture, It's an observation.
Watching everyone celebrate Halloween while completely forgetting what Halloween actually was.
Halloween comes from Celtic Samhain, from European ancestor veneration, And somehow, you forgot what your own sacred night was for.
It wasn't about sexy costumes. It wasn't about Instagram likes. It wasn't about performing for strangers.
It was about the dead.
What you lost without realizing it
Samhain marked the night when the boundary between living and dead became thin. Not gone. Thin. When ancestors could visit. When you were supposed to commune with the spirit world, face mortality, acknowledge the cycles of life and death.
People lit bonfires to guide lost souls home. They left food offerings for visiting spirits. They wore costumes, yes, but not to look attractive. To confuse malevolent entities during this vulnerable passage when the veils thinned.
If you dressed as a witch, you were channeling the wise woman healer who understood plant medicine and mystery. If you dressed as a skeleton, you were confronting your own death. If you dressed as spirits, you were acknowledging realms beyond the physical.
This was shadow work before psychology named it. A culturally sanctioned night to face what you normally avoid. To stop performing and start feeling. To acknowledge that death is part of the sacred cycle.
And then somewhere along the way, it became about which costume shows the most skin.
The pattern I can't unsee
I grew up in India where ancestor veneration wasn't ancient tradition. It was just what you did. Pitru Paksha happened every year. My grandmother would perform specific rituals, speak to those who came before us as if they were in the room. It wasn't morbid. It was maintenance.
Then I moved West. And I watched Halloween happen.
The contrast became impossible to ignore.
Here's what every other culture on earth still understands:
Día de los Muertos in Mexico and Latin America. Families spend weeks building altars with photographs, marigolds, favorite foods of the deceased. They stay overnight in cemeteries, sharing meals and stories and tequila. The dead return home for the celebration. They're honored. Remembered. Fed.
Obon in Japan. Families return to ancestral homes, clean graves, light lanterns to guide spirits. On the final night, floating lanterns are released on rivers to guide them back. The ritual says: you came home, we honored you, now return safely.
Pitru Paksha in Hindu tradition. Sixteen days dedicated entirely to ancestors. Families offer food, water, prayers. The understanding is simple: we exist because they existed. Honoring them isn't optional. It's sacred duty.
Qingming in China. Families visit graves, clean tombstones, offer newly harvested food. It's about remembering your lineage, your place in the family chain, your connection to those who walked before you.
Chuseok in Korea. Ancestral rites, grave visits, offering grains and fruits, sharing stories about deceased family members.
Different cultures. Different continents. Same fundamental understanding.
The dead are not gone. They are transformed. You can maintain relationship with them. You should.
But we have turned our one remaining ancestral night into costume parties and candy consumption.
What this actually costs you
When you lose connection with your ancestors, you don't just lose history. You lose something in yourself.
You lose the sense of being part of something larger than your individual existence. You lose wisdom about how patterns repeat through generations. You lose the protection and guidance that comes from maintaining relationship with those who loved you and walked this earth before you.
You become spiritually orphaned.
In every culture that maintains ancestor veneration, there's an understanding: the dead are not just memories. They are spiritual presences that can offer guidance, protection, wisdom. They watch over their descendants. They care about what happens to their lineage.
But you have to maintain the relationship. You have to remember them. Honor them. Speak to them. Make offerings.
When you forget to do this, you cut yourself off from a source of spiritual strength that every culture before modern Western culture understood was essential.
And what do you do instead on this sacred night? You dress up for attention. You perform for strangers. You consume images of death without any actual engagement with mortality.
You turned communion with the dead into another opportunity for likes.
The performance you're stuck in
Look at what Halloween has become. Consuming candy. Consuming alcohol. Consuming attention. Manufactured images of death with zero actual relationship to mortality.
People dress as zombies and never ask what it means to be spiritually dead while physically alive. Skeleton decorations go up and nobody pauses to face their own impermanence. "Spooky" aesthetics with no transformation underneath.
The closest most people get to honoring deceased loved ones is a social media post. "Missing you today." Maybe a photo. Some heart emojis.
I'm not saying that's wrong. Grief is real. People express it however they can.
But the gap between that and what my grandmother did. The preparation. The intention. The actual conversation with those who passed. The understanding that they're not gone, just transformed.
That gap is where you lost something essential.
The culture sold you sexy costumes. Told you that you deserve to feel empowered. And you accepted it because everyone else was doing it, because questioning it felt heavy, because the real work seemed like too much.
But external performance without internal connection? That's not empowerment. That's avoidance dressed up as freedom.
What the real work looks like
Facing death. Your own mortality. The death of everyone you love. The reality that your time here is limited.
Acknowledging the dead as transformed rather than gone.
Exploring actual shadow aspects of your psyche instead of performing them. The witch. The warrior. The parts you usually suppress.
This is what Halloween was originally for. Not distraction from death. Direct engagement with it.
When my grandmother performed rituals during Pitru Paksha, she wasn't being morbid or dwelling in sadness. She was maintaining relationship. Expressing gratitude. Asking for guidance from those who walked this path before her.
She knew something the modern world forgot: the dead are still here. Just in different form.
And when you honor them, something in you changes. You stop feeling so alone. You start understanding your place in the chain of existence.
You return to your heart instead of staying stuck in performance.
The choice in front of you
If you want to dress up and go to parties, go. That's your choice. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.
But maybe there's room for something else too.
You could sit down, alone or with family, and talk about who came before you. Make their favorite dish. Look at old photos. Thank them out loud for what they endured so you could be here.
You could face the reality that you will die. Think about what you want your life to mean. Do actual shadow work instead of shadow performance.
You could light a candle for your grandmother. Your grandfather. Your ancestors you never met. Tell them you remember them. Ask for their guidance. Acknowledge that without them, you don't exist.
The culture will keep offering you consumption and performance. Your feed will fill with costume photos. That's fine. That's just what's available.
But there's another option now. Another way to engage with this night that your own ancestors understood.
The traditions are still there. Samhain. Día de los Muertos. Pitru Paksha. Obon. Different cultures, same wisdom. The dead aren't gone. The relationship doesn't have to end. The veils are thin, and they can still guide you.
But you have to choose to remember.
You have to stop performing death and start actually facing it.
What if this year, you did?
Comments