Picture it. October 31st. A night when winter still scared people. When the dark could kill you. Before costumes were a concern.
A treat once meant calories.
A treat once meant warmth.
A treat said your community wanted you alive another night.
Treats were not for play. They were mutual aid.
Halloween was a ritual reminder that you do not survive winter alone.
Feast Before the Frost
In agrarian societies, the end of October marked a threshold. The harvest had been gathered. The nights grew cold and dark. For Celtic communities, the festival of Samhain marked the year’s close and the arrival of the unknown. According to researchers at Boston University, the Celts believed the boundary between the living and the dead was thinnest at this moment.
So people built fires to protect themselves. They dressed in disguise so the dead would not recognize them. They feasted because feasts made you feel happy, less afraid.
By the Middle Ages, “souling” emerged. Children and the poor went door to door offering prayers for the deceased in exchange for food.
Soul cakes were not snacks. They were part of a survival protocol.
Halloween began as a hunger ritual.
The American Experiment: From Harvest to Haunt
These beliefs crossed the Atlantic with Irish and Scottish immigrants in the 1800s and landed in a rapidly changing America. Industrialization was accelerating. Cities swelled. New immigrants needed traditions that felt like home. Halloween became one of those outlets.
At first, the holiday looked like chaos. In the 1930s, dozens of newspapers described the night as a problem of juvenile delinquency; flour bombings, vandalized porches, masked gangs roaming through neighborhoods. Smithsonian Magazine notes that Halloween had a mischief problem long before it found candy and costumes. Communities scrambled to tame it. Cities organized parties to keep kids out of trouble.
The hunger component persisted in subtle forms. Children still moved in packs asking for something to eat or drink. The instinct had not vanished.
Then the 20th century did what America does. It optimized, maximized, and capitalized everything it touched.
Candy, Corporations, and the Death of the Porch Meal
Post-World War II America rewired the landscape. Rationing ended. Families left cities for newly minted suburbs. Homeownership expanded. Supermarkets replaced larders and pantries. Front porches lined perfect sidewalks illuminated by reliable streetlights.
Halloween suddenly had infrastructure.
Once the porch became predictable, the pitch changed. Halloween was no longer a feast of survival. It was a celebration of consumption. Candy companies exploited mid-century safety fears and convinced parents that only factory-wrapped sweets were acceptable. Historian Samira Kawash notes that these marketing efforts pushed homemade food out of the bowl on the porch. The exchange stayed, but the meaning got sold off.
Costumes followed the same logic. Disguise was once a quick smear of soot or a blanket over the head. It was about anonymity. It was about becoming unrecognizable to spirits. But 1950s television brought to life characters kids could become. Cowboys. Astronauts. Cartoon characters with faces you could buy.
Halloween identity became a consumer product.
By the 1970s, the holiday had fully transformed into a multibillion-dollar industry. The porch still invited neighbors. The knock still arrived. But the exchange changed. A gift that once helped a community member endure the cold, dark winter was replaced by something bought in bulk, mass-produced, and overconsumed. Most egregiously, it was replaced with something no one needed.
According to the National Retail Federation, the Halloween industry will top $15 billion in 2025. Not bad for a holiday that started as neighbors handing each other bread so no one starved.
Halloween survived. The hunger that created it did not.
The Day of the Dead as Mirror and Reminder
A teacher of mine once described Día de los Muertos as “Mexican Halloween”. Unfortunately, that’s how many Americans learn it. And it’s wrong.
Día de los Muertos is not Halloween. It’s not even related. Sure, they share skeleton motifs and fall next to one another on the calendar, but that’s where the overlap ends.
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) grows from Indigenous Nahua beliefs about death, memory, and continuity. It is a ritual of welcome, where the dead are invited back into the home to be remembered, fed, and celebrated. When Spain arrived, some of those practices fused with the Catholic calendar, specifically All Saints’ Day, which honors all saints, and All Souls’ Day, both of which are dedicated to honoring the dead. That blend gives Día de los Muertos its power. It is ancient and evolving simultaneously.
The difference between Día de los Muertos and Halloween shows up at the table.
Families build ofrendas, altars that welcome and honor the dead. On them, they place the favorite foods of the people they are missing. Pan de muerto is ceremoniously baked. Candles and marigolds light the way home. The idea is straightforward. The living nourish the dead, so memory stays alive.
Commercial creep exists. Tourists buy skull keychains. Big brands print calavera merch. Others borrow the aesthetic. But even then, the center holds. The offering stays personal. The ritual stays relational. Someone’s name is always attached to the feast.
That is the contrast worth paying attention to. Halloween lost the meal and kept the mask. Día de los Muertos still holds to the tradition of gathering. It still trusts that an offering can hold meaning. It still remembers that the table is how we keep family close in body and spirit.
The Real Trick or Treat
Halloween is now one of the biggest retail events on the calendar. Billions spent. Trends refreshed yearly. Plastic, packaging, and profit on repeat.
The real trick is that we turned an event born from hunger into a holiday built on excess.
Buried beneath all that noise, neighbors once opened their doors because winter was coming, and it took a village to survive.
Maybe, the real treat is that the knock still matters. The candy doesn’t.
