Halloween invites us to live with the uncertainty of a spooky season

One of the best parts of new parenthood is figuring out what your child will be for Halloween. When looking at costume options for my 15 month old, I have been surprised and often delighted by what can be found online. For a reasonable price you can dress up your baby like this Cher Horowitz, Doctor Brown, Lord FarquaadMary Poppins or a Rydell High Cheerleader while you slip into the role of Austin Powers, Forrest Gump, Harry Potter or Wonder Woman. The holiday feels nostalgic and innocent and even reminds us of something we all have in common: that we were once children.

That is, of course, until I go outside, where I am reminded of my lifelong discomfort with the more lurid aspects of Halloween. All around me are houses full of frightening artificial skeletons, goblins, clowns and witches. “How can anyone endure this?” I keep asking myself.

As it turns out, Halloween has always been rooted in dueling ideas of the otherworldly. Set aside as a day in the 9th century honors the Catholic saintsit followed an even older Gaelic celebration of the transition between seasons and states of being. You could think of our modern holiday as emblematic of All Saints' Day—the Christian festival preceding All Hallows' Day (or All Hallows' Day)—and Samhain, an ancient Celtic holiday that marks the last harvest of the year and the beginning of winter.

As Katherine May writes in her book Wintering, Samhain (pronounced: Saw-win) represents a seasonal and spiritual threshold where the veil between this world and the next is thinnest, inviting loved ones we have lost to visit us. Between the bright fall leaves and the first snow of the year, it is “a time between two worlds, between two phases of the year” and “a way to mark that ambiguous moment when you didn't know who you would become or what.” The future would hold.

Today, we've lost much of that awe of Halloween, but the holiday continues to thrive. Unaware of its original purpose, our modern version is an expression of the American idea that one can be whoever one wants to be, and at the same time a vehicle for our tensions and fears, embodying death with temporary disguises and decorative trumping joke transformed.

Perhaps the severed skulls and bloody hands on our lawns are part of an attempt to harness or reclaim our fears. Or perhaps it has become easier to confront the fantastical monsters of our imaginations than the human monsters running for our public office—a process that happens to peak just days after Halloween every few years.

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Elizabeth Bruenig wrote For the Washington Post, Halloween “gets its depth and intrigue from layering things that seem scary but are really harmless — toothy jack-o-lanterns, spooky costumes, stories of ghosts, witches and monsters — on top of things that seem harmless “But.” are really frightening, like the transition of harvest season into the long, cold darkness.”

But what if what we really fear is not so much the “long, cold darkness” as our unwillingness to face it? Americans sometimes seem unable to confront the real darkness of the world, let alone embrace what can be gained from it: compassion for the suffering of others; acceptance of the seasonality of life; separation from the capitalist hustle and bustle; and a greater sense of gratitude, belonging and purpose.

The passage of time, the grief for those we have lost, the longing for a better world that always seems out of reach – all these things can be frightening. But they don't have to be.

With Election Day approaching just after this ancient holiday, it's time to turn the “holy” into Halloween again. Amid the bare branches, flickering candles and migratory birds lies an invitation to reflect not only on the children we once were, but also on the adults we aspire to become – and to linger for a moment in the seasonal and spiritual in-between.

Cornelia Powers is an author working on a book about golfer Bessie Anthony, her great-great-grandmother.