Can We Reclaim Halloween?
Every October, America turns its neighborhoods into graveyards.
Skeletons hang from porches; houses are strung with blinking orange lights, schoolchildren dress as monsters and witches. Halloween has become a $13-billion industry cheerfully celebrating doom, darkness, and death.
Yet it began as something very different.
The original holiday started in the 9th century in Western Christendom.
It was the vigil before the Christian feast of All Saints' Day — a night of remembrance for those who conquered sin and death and entered Heaven in the grace of God.
It was meant to affirm life beyond the grave, not to glorify what lies beneath it.
In fact, the word "Halloween" itself is simply a shortened form of "All Hallows Eve" — a reminder that this night once belonged not to horror, but to holiness.
But over time, Hollywood and a broader cultural drift towards secularism has hollowed out its hallowed meaning.
What replaced it is not just consumerism but something more insidious: a highly commercialized and gaudy showcase of the sinister and macabre.
The entertainment industry, predicably, has played a decisive role in this transformation. Horror franchises like "The Omen" and "The Exorcist" have been rebooted for new audiences — but without the weighty Christian meaning that helped define their original versions.
Streaming platforms have popularized witchcraft, occult powers and supernatural rebellion for teens.
Even family-films like "Hocus Pocus 2" and "Haunted Mansion," as well as the hit series "Wednesday," feature characters dabbling in dark magic, mystical rites or alternative spiritualities with minimal reference to faith or redemption.
In an era when religion is dismissed as antiquated, Hollywood markets darkness as depth and despair as daring.
None of this is happening in isolation.
Over the past year we've seen faith-spaces become targets of terror: at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, a gunman fired into pews full of praying children, killing two and wounding 17, in what authorities call a hate crime against Catholics.
Churches and schools no longer stand apart from the culture war — they are battlegrounds.
We are witnessing not only moral confusion but overt hostility to faith itself.
In a society that laughs at evil, it should surprise no one when evil runs rampant.
Of course, the deeper issue goes beyond one observance or celebration.
When a civilization loses its rituals of reverence, it often replaces them with rituals of fear.
History shows the pattern clearly: when the French tore down their altars, they built guillotines; when the Soviets outlawed worship, they filled the vacuum with parades and purges.
A culture that forgets Heaven will soon become obsessed with Hell.
The paradox of our age is that the more we mock sin, the more sin mocks us. Indeed, our fascination with horror and death isn’t proof of sophistication—it’s proof of spiritual starvation. It shows a national soul so deprived of transcendence that it will even hunger for the demonic.
And this is exactly what has happened to Halloween.
It has become completely disconnected from its original Christian meaning and now exalts all that is ugly, violent, superstitious, and evil.
Yes, when we dress innocent children in costumes that glorify gore, the diabolical and the occult, we risk dulling their sensitivity to evil.
And that's a first step to inviting evil into their lives. There's a certain "glamor" that evil possesses, capable of seducing the imagination even without the presence of actual occult practices.
As parents, we need to take that danger more seriously — the danger of treating evil as entertainment, of letting darkness masquerade as play.
I can already hear the squealing from the secular left.
"You’re being melodramatic. Halloween is just fun and games."
And to some extent, that's true—Halloween should be fun.
After all, at its heart is the belief that death does not have the final word; that the end of the human story is not the cemetery, but eternal life — hopefully — in Heaven.
That's a joyful message, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be proclaimed with joy and good humor.
To be a Christian doesn't mean you check your brains — or your sense of humor — at the door. Not everything with the trappings of superstition is meant to be taken seriously.
Everyone knows that a fortune cookie is just a lighthearted joke.
Everyone who enjoys roller coasters and horror movies understands that being a little scared can be thrilling and even lift us out of the gloom.
The real challenge in Halloween lies is in striking a balance between rejecting what is harmful, while not without losing sight of what is just innocent fun.
It's possible to enjoy costumes and candy and even some good-natured spookiness, as long as we restore the sacred story beneath the spectacle.
What's most required at this time is discernment.
Amid the frenzied embrace of ghosts, greed, and the grotesque, parents need to teach children the holiday’s true Christian meaning.
Halloween is a mirror of our collective soul.
What we see reflected today is just too dark and disturbing.
It needs to be brighter. It needs to be holier.
If we truly want to rebuild a culture of faith, decency, and moral order, it begins with how we celebrate even the smallest traditions.
Perhaps, this All Hallows' Eve, by sweeping aside the cobwebs of cynicism and remembering what the night was meant to teach, we may glimpse again that divine paradox at the heart of all faith: that light has the power to overcome darkness; that, despite all appearances to the contrary and despite what the world would have us believe, in the end, life does conquer death.
Anthony DeStefano is the author of over 30 books, including his latest, "All Hallows’ Eve, a children’s picture book." Read Anthony DeStefano's reports - here.
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