With Halloween around the corner, most of us can’t wait to get through this week and embrace the “Halloweekend.” Between the costumes, parties, and treats, we finally get to escape from the weight of classes and work for a night. Halloween is a chance to disappear into an alter ego, to become someone entirely different, and to take a small break from the exhaustion of being ourselves all the time. But it got me thinking: How did this holiday emerge, and why do we all love it so much?
We can trace Halloween back to the Celtic New Year’s festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), meaning “summer’s end.” It was a pagan celebration marking the end of the harvest and the start of the darker season. The Celts believed that during this time, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin, and unwanted spirits could cross over. To protect themselves, people darkened their faces with ashes to hide from mischievous spirits but revealed themselves to the souls of loved ones who had passed. Over time, this practice evolved into wearing masks — and eventually, full costumes.
The ancient Celts perceived a threat in the blurring of life and death, but instead of running from it, they chose to ritualize it. To them, Samhain was a time for spirits to be acknowledged, and by doing so, those spirits could protect rather than harm. There was beauty in this balance: a recognition that life and death, joy and fear, aren’t opposites but companions, and that we might not be able to have one without the other. This confrontation could be frightening, but by disguising themselves, they could face their fears with a barrier between their true selves and their masked selves. Fear became not something to suppress but something to play with — a paradox that turned anxiety into celebration. These rituals weren’t merely superstition; they were acts of meaning-making in a world full of uncertainty. The Celts found comfort in ritual, as well as a way to face the unknown together.
Psychologically, we do the same thing today. We use Halloween to confront fear and mortality, but we do it through laughter and make-believe. As college students, it’s also a time to blur the lines of social norms, to experiment with identity, and to show sides of ourselves that might otherwise stay hidden. Like the Celts, our disguises can bring forth a strange kind of honesty; by pretending, we can express what might have been too vulnerable to show in plain sight. When we celebrate together, fear can turn into community.
Perhaps that’s why Halloween, despite being thousands of years old, still endures. It began as a way to make peace with death, and it remains a ritual to make peace with the parts of life that scare us the most. Whether it’s the stress of the semester or the fear of being judged, Halloween gives us a creative way to confront it all — to laugh, connect, and remember that in the dark, there sometimes lies the most room for joy.
