Samhain: When We Turned From the Fire
Halloween is not just a distortion. It is a theft — of our stories, our sorrow, our sacred time.
The Hollowing of Halloween
Long before costumes, candy, and chaos, there was Samhain—a sacred Irish festival marking the end of the harvest, the thinning of the veil between worlds, and the beginning of winter. It was a night of reverence, of firelight, of storytelling. A time to honor ancestors, ward off spirits, and prepare the soul for darkness.
It was never meant to be a bender.
A Festival of Thresholds
Samhain was the hinge of the year. It was when the living could speak with the dead, when memory was sacred and fear was holy. It taught us to respect the unseen, to prepare for loss, to carry light into the shadow.
But what is it now?
A weekend of binge drinking.
Sexualized costumes and pop-culture idols.
Plastic skeletons and commercial horror.
Emergency rooms filled with the aftermath.
We’ve taken one of the most spiritually powerful nights of our heritage and gutted it. We turned fire into fog machines. We turned ancestors into afterparties.
From Samhain to Halloween
What began in Irish fields was exported, reshaped, and sold back to us. Western culture took Samhain, softened it, commercialized it, and returned it wrapped in neon and sugar.
The bonfires became pumpkin buckets.
The rituals became parades.
The reverence was replaced with indulgence.
Embracing this blasphemous Americanized version is an assault on our dignity and heritage. It has not only allowed other countries to denigrate its value—but we have even accepted this cheap imitation as our own in the most disgraceful abandonment of our tradition.
We dress up to escape, not to remember.
We party to forget, not to prepare.
The Sacred Lost
While abroad, I used to feel insulted when religious “fanatics” warned me Halloween was demonic. I’d try to educate them—“No, it’s Irish. It’s about warding off evil, not worshiping it.”
But then I started to see what they saw.
What was once meant to protect us from darkness has become a night to invite it. Sexualized evil, glorified gore, masked violence, and nihilistic mockery. What was once fire and prayer has become nightclub promotions and synthetic fog.
America has poisoned Halloween and turned it into exactly what it was meant to guard against.
The Call to Rekindle
This should be a time of reverence. A time of remembering. A time of warding away, not welcoming in.
Let us reclaim it—not with anger, but with clarity. Not with judgment, but with light.
This isn’t about hating what was done to our sacred event. It is about walking away from the mockery, and returning to our roots with dignity.
Samhain was not just spooky fun—it was spiritual survival. It reminded us that winter would test us. That elders might not survive the cold. That death walks among the living—and should be honored, not mocked.
Now, it reminds us only of party buses and Instagram reels.
But the fire still burns—if we dare to light it.
Let us:
Tell our own ghost stories, rooted in ancestral truth, not studio scripts.
Dress with meaning, not market trends.
Gather in quiet awe, not drunken noise.
Light the fire and sit with the veil, remembering that Samhain belongs to us.
We don’t need to cancel Halloween. We need to reclaim Samhain—not to go backwards, but to move forward with depth. Not to reject costumes, but to fill them with story. Not to reject the night, but to remember why it mattered. To give those with soul an alternative to the degeneracy of Halloween.
Let us not turn from the fire. Let us gather around it—together.
A New Sacred Celebration
Imagine stadiums filled not with distractions, but with meaning:
Storytellers weaving Irish myths and tales of the Otherworld.
Fire dancers, flame spitters, and sacred prayers.
A rolling list of names: those who died this year, and those we pray survive the next.
This must not be a passive celebration. We must teach the next generation how to protect their souls.
Masks, Meaning, and Children
Children’s masks should not be hollow—each should reflect a real fear of the modern world:
Greed.
Consumerism.
Cultural collapse.
Each mask a talisman. Each design a ritual. Each child a participant in spiritual protection—not a prop in corporate theater.
Rejecting the Nightmare
Let’s be honest about what Halloween has become:
Trick-or-treating as entitled transaction.
Candy as a substitute for nourishment.
Obesity and sugar addiction glamorized under the mask of festivity.
Let’s teach children sacred foods—harvest meals, apples, nuts, berries, and pomegranate seeds.
Let them taste tradition, not chemicals.
Let them sit with elders in circle, not in front of content loops.
A Future Worth Celebrating
Samhain can be fun.
But it must be sacred.
The government should support this revival—not with regulations, but with recognition. Prizes for meaningful masks. Funding for ritual theatre. Cultural awards for true creativity. A unique Irish event for visitors to take home as a one of a kind story.
Let Samhain become what it was always meant to be:
A rite of passage.
A threshold between light and darkness.
A time to honor the dead and protect the living.
It starts with teaching our children:
You are not here to consume. You are here to carry.
You are not just dressed up. You are armored in story.
To the ones still searching for something real—this is your night.
Let’s take back Samhain. And make it sacred again.