By Laura Hunt Miller
As a kid I used to dream that one day I’d live somewhere where everyone celebrated Halloween, like in Hocus Pocus — porch lights on, jack-o’-lanterns lit, kids running freely from house to house, grown-ups laughing and waving from lawn chairs and stoops.
I found Halloween magical because it was the one day of the year we got to go outside of our yard in the dark (with permission), see all our neighbors, and stay up a little later with our families. The night belonged to all of us, and we loved it.
But then something happened.
Fall festivals and trunk-or-treats paraded in to save us from all our fears of phantom blades in candies, and those neighborhood stalkers we never knew were there until October rolled around.
Halloween became a sterile punch card of what the holiday once was, although I think the changes were well-intended.
After all, Halloween can be a lot of work for grown-ups. Sweeping all the holiday trappings into one parking lot and divvying up decorating duties sounded great in theory. But honestly, I never found hot asphalt very inviting, and you know most of our Halloweens in the south are warm ones.
I was never one to mass-equate kids’ costumes and Halloween décor with the satanic either, but that seemed to be a surprisingly big fear in the 90s. I mean, Harry Potter had to be the Antichrist, right? He must be playing the long game though, that cheeky Brit.
Folks are always so eager to find what they are afraid of and crush it. But that is kind of what made Halloween so great; we could face our fears, laugh at them even, and come morning find that everything was still ok. Our world had not ended, our souls hadn’t been taken. Maybe a few pumpkins had been smashed, or (gasp) a house had been rolled.
And with all our modern conveniences, drawing inward to ourselves, to groups of others that think like us, dress like us, act like us, is so easy. Blanketed in our own brands of psychological comfort, we distance ourselves from anything, or anyone, we don’t already know or understand.
One of the greatest ironies though is, the more comfortable we got, the less neighborly we were to our own neighborhoods. We curated the majority of our time to remain within sanitized circles of like-minded social groups, and turned everything “kid-related” into risk-management strategies with candy. Well, sometimes candy.
But Halloween done right, is a magical night because it unites us. It gives kids confidence. It gives parents connection. It gives neighbors a reason to turn on the porch light and say, I am making time for you and your families tonight, even if we’ve never actually met. Talk about the kindness of strangers.
In our neighborhood, there’s been a quiet renaissance brewing. Folks have been setting their lawn chairs back out in their yards. Little kids have been learning how to say “trick or treat” and “thank you.” We have been coming back out to reclaim this one night, one smile at a time, and have fun together.
Maybe not every neighborhood is built for trick-or-treating, but if five houses on a block turn on their lights, the street starts to feel friendly again. If ten do, it becomes a destination that feels safe. And if just one puts out a Bluetooth speaker with spooky music? That might be the house your kid remembers forever.
So this year? Sit outside. Wave to someone new. Let the night be full of laughter, and a maybe little harmless mischief. And if you don’t have a neighborhood you can celebrate in, come visit ours. We’ll be your neighbor.
Because you never know who’s walking up the street —or how long they’ve been waiting for a night like Halloween to discover what magic feels like for themselves.
