Halloween’s Dark Transformation: From Sacred Tradition to Commercialized Horror

By Anthony DeStefano
Tuesday, 28 October 2025 10:51 AM EDT

Every October, America turns its neighborhoods into graveyards. Skeletons hang from porches; houses are strung with blinking orange lights, schoolchildren dress as monsters and witches. Halloween has become a $13-billion industry cheerfully celebrating doom, darkness, and death. Yet it began as something very different.

The original holiday started in the 9th century in Western Christendom as the vigil before the Christian feast of All Saints’ Day—a night of remembrance for those who conquered sin and death and entered Heaven in the grace of God. It was meant to affirm life beyond the grave, not to glorify what lies beneath it. The word “Halloween” itself is a shortened form of “All Hallows Eve,” a reminder that this night once belonged not to horror, but to holiness.

Over time, Hollywood and a broader cultural drift towards secularism have hollowed out its hallowed meaning. What replaced it is not just consumerism but something more insidious: a highly commercialized and gaudy showcase of the sinister and macabre. The entertainment industry has played a decisive role in this transformation. Horror franchises like “The Omen” and “The Exorcist” have been rebooted for new audiences—without the weighty Christian meaning that helped define their original versions. Streaming platforms have popularized witchcraft, occult powers, and supernatural rebellion for teens. Even family films like “Hocus Pocus 2” and “Haunted Mansion,” as well as the hit series “Wednesday,” feature characters dabbling in dark magic, mystical rites, or alternative spiritualities with minimal reference to faith or redemption.

In an era when religion is dismissed as antiquated, Hollywood markets darkness as depth and despair as daring. This shift is not isolated. Over the past year, faith-spaces have become targets of terror: at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, a gunman fired into pews full of praying children, killing two and wounding 17, in what authorities call a hate crime against Catholics. Churches and schools no longer stand apart from the culture war—they are battlegrounds.

We are witnessing not only moral confusion but overt hostility to faith itself. In a society that laughs at evil, it should surprise no one when evil runs rampant. The deeper issue lies beyond one observance or celebration. When a civilization loses its rituals of reverence, it often replaces them with rituals of fear. History shows the pattern clearly: when the French tore down their altars, they built guillotines; when the Soviets outlawed worship, they filled the vacuum with parades and purges. A culture that forgets Heaven will soon become obsessed with Hell.

The paradox of our age is that the more we mock sin, the more sin mocks us. Our fascination with horror and death isn’t proof of sophistication—it’s proof of spiritual starvation. It shows a national soul so deprived of transcendence that it will even hunger for the demonic. Halloween has become completely disconnected from its original Christian meaning and now exalts all that is ugly, violent, superstitious, and evil.

Dressing innocent children in costumes that glorify gore, the diabolical, and the occult risks dulling their sensitivity to evil. This is a first step to inviting evil into their lives. As parents, we need to take that danger more seriously—the danger of treating evil as entertainment, of letting darkness masquerade as play.

While Halloween should be fun, it must not abandon its sacred roots. The real challenge lies in striking a balance between rejecting what is harmful and preserving innocent fun. It’s possible to enjoy costumes and candy and even some good-natured spookiness, as long as we restore the sacred story beneath the spectacle. Amid the frenzied embrace of ghosts, greed, and the grotesque, parents need to teach children the holiday’s true Christian meaning.

Halloween is a mirror of our collective soul. What we see reflected today is too dark and disturbing. It needs to be brighter. It needs to be holier. Rebuilding a culture of faith begins with how we celebrate even the smallest traditions. This All Hallows’ Eve, by sweeping aside the cobwebs of cynicism and remembering what the night was meant to teach, we may glimpse again that divine paradox at the heart of all faith: that light has the power to overcome darkness; that life does conquer death.