Halloween mania reflects a changing Ireland

Have you noticed how in recent years Halloween has become as big a deal as Christmas? For some people it is certainly the bigger festival of the two, which is a big change from the days of my youth. How has it come about and what does it mean?

The celebration of Halloween is everywhere around you. It has been for weeks now and seems to start earlier each year. The build up to it certainly feels like Christmas of old. Everywhere you look, you can see the signs. Every window display and every shop you go into is full of it.

When I was a kid in the west, Halloween was certainly a thing. It was marked for sure, no doubt about it. But it was very different in size and scale. On the evening of the 31st you would have ducking and trying to eat apples on a string and all that. There was a bit of trick or treating and dressing up, but that was mainly for townies.

When you became a teenager there would be the scary movie, often of that dreadful slasher kind. So Halloween wasn’t nothing, and it was certainly fun, but it wasn’t exactly the most anticipated event of the year, and certainly not the most intensely celebrated.

That was always Christmas, and Halloween paled in significance compared to it. Christmas was what you longed for, a festival that unfurled slowly. Halloween was just a night that came and went with a slice of brack and without any great fuss.

Now, Halloween is a rolling pageant, an outburst of energy and creativity. The costumes for example have become ever more elaborate. On October 31st, and for days before, the country becomes an enormous Hollywood film set. Ghosts and ghouls, witches and monsters are all around us.

The blood and gore is playfully presented but does not leave much to the imagination. If you were doing a time and motion study, the make up artistry work alone must take up thousands of hours across the country. Young people are planning Halloween parties that would allow for degrees in event management and design to be awarded. The Late Late Show might be missing a trick here. They have embraced Country and Western, and with considerable success. The Toy Show is of course their most winning formula. Surely a Halloween special would prove a treat?

Less pleasantly, in urban areas, the sounds of fire crackers and fireworks of one kind or another generate a cacophony. And they start a whole month before Halloween. That those things are dangerous and expensive appears to be no impediment whatsoever to their use.

But what is most striking is how much people revel in the whole thing. There is an energy and excitement to Halloween that crosses the generations. This I think is a notable contrast to how Christmas is experienced nowadays. With the religious meaning of the Christmas season increasingly drained out of it, adults now love Christmas for two reasons: it is a break from the daily grind and a chance to catch up with people you like but do not often see; and secondly, and perhaps most especially, because of how it enraptures children. That is the Christmas magic. But Halloween enraptures adults as much - and possibly more – than children. Look at the grown ups at Halloween – they are wild for it.

Why? What is behind that? There are three interlinked things I think.

First, a festival that celebrates the dark at this time of year is of course well placed to appeal to people. The human imagination is fascinated by the terrifying, and tales of blood and gore have always attracted listeners, readers and viewers. And Halloween makes the terrifying safe, by making it playful. It is therefore just good fun, and there is nothing in the world wrong with a bit of fun.

But there is more to it than that in 2025 Ireland surely? This is a country which in one generation has seen its uniform and tightly codified spirituality collapse. That old world, represented by the solid buildings and firm doctrines of Roman Catholicism, has been replaced now by a spirituality which is essentially will-o'-the-wisp. You will hear an awful lot of vague stuff over the next couple of weeks about how Halloween speaks to us deeply from the past about how our ancestors engaged with the spiritual dimensions of their existence etc etc. You can take all that with the pinch of salt it deserves.

There is a certain irony that a faith based system like Christianity spent its early centuries trying to drive out - or incorporate - many of the superstitions which are now coming back into fashion in the light of Christianity’s decline. But of course Christians have always relied – often imperfectly it is true – on reason and rationality as well as faith to explain their understanding of the world and what comes after it. There isn’t a lot of reason involved in much of what passes for spirituality in Ireland in 2025.

People believe in all sorts of stuff now, much of which is just plain old fashioned piseogs, repackaged for the 21st century and for the age of social media. Halloween and everything associated with it grows like anything in that kind of - essentially pagan - soil. That is why traditional and deeply committed Christians are so suspicious of - and even a bit hostile to – the increasing popularity of Halloween. Amidst all the fun, they can see well what is driving it.

And thirdly, commercialism and capitalism is adept at adopting to the change in attitudes. Halloween is the most perfect commercial opportunity. If you are selling stuff, you can knock yourself out in your efforts at this time of year: and, when it involves Halloween, you don’t have to listen to the pious talk you hear about commercialising Christmas.

And so put a lot of piseog nonsense and credit cards and people’s natural desire to have some fun into the pot, and as you stir that cauldron, you can explain much of why Halloween is now so popular. And if that makes me a curmudgeonly old killjoy to your ears, all I can say is boo to you.