By Dan Russo
Editorial
It’s hard not to notice the dark turn Halloween decorations have taken in recent years. What began as a tradition of displaying simple Jack-O-Lanterns and maybe a few fake bats and cobwebs on a front porch to elicit light hearted spookiness for trick or treaters has evolved into lawns full of life sized zombies, motion activated cackling witches with green faces or black robbed hooded figures with no faces at all. There’s also been an increase in the gore factor. In windows on houses or cars, it’s not uncommon to see images of movie slashers like the masked face of Michael Myers, the main character of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” series or Ghostface, the killer from the “Scream” films.
The decorations are also getting larger and more elaborate. There are now Halloween inflatables that are as large as homes. Some of these are pretty innocent, but there’s also a growing number of glaring monsters and giant plastic skeletons. It’s gotten so bad that The Today Show website, today.com published an article in October 2025 titled “Is Halloween Getting Too Scary for Kids?” Lifestyle reporter Elise Sole tells parents “If your kid is freaked out, they’re not alone” and gives tips for how to handle it.
Claire Ciliotta, a psychotherapist told Today that, “Children are introduced to incredibly violent, murderous images without any context. A child under five fundamentally would never have seen anything like that — it’s their first encounter with violence, brutality, death. I promise you, children aren’t asking to see that …”
So what are the solutions? Well, according to psychologists quoted in the article, parents can do crafts with their kids instead of going to haunted houses, use less scary decorations, and if a kid does get afraid of something they see, the adults should acknowledge it right away. These are good ideas, but, as Catholics, we need to use our spiritual sense to address the root of the problem. We must bring light back to the dark caverns of the holiday.
The word Halloween itself, after all, is an abbreviation of All Hallow’s Eve, the vigil before All Saints Day. Then, of course, there’s All Souls Day Nov. 2. The purpose of this three-day period is to honor the dead now in heaven, and pray for those in purgatory. Not to glorify death itself, as many of the modern decorations seem to do.
According to the Franciscan Friars of Our Lady of Guadalupe, “On May 13, 732, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to all the saints and martyrs, beginning what would become an annual celebration of the feast of All Saints throughout the Church. Eight centuries later, Pope Gregory IV moved All Saints’ Day from May 13 to Nov. 1 out of concern for the pilgrims who packed Rome during the hot weather for the feast day celebrations.”
The friars further explain in an article on their website that: “For the ancient Celts, Oct. 31 was the feast of Samhain, which recognized harvest season’s end and the beginning of the cold, harsh winter. The Celts believed ghosts of the dead returned to earth on Oct. 31, the night before their new year began, a time when realms of the dead and living could converge. Many modern-day Halloween traditions derive from a blend of All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints and Samhain celebrations.”
Here are two ways we can reverse the sinister twist Halloween and Halloween decorations have undergone in our country. First, I think we, as Americans, should learn from Mexican Catholic tradition. For the Day of the Dead in Mexico, which is celebrated around Nov. 1-2, families set up displays in which they remember deceased loved ones. This year at the St. Vincent Center in Davenport, home of the chancery, a staff member put together one of these featuring photos of recently departed clergy from our diocese, along with lay people and religious.
Colorful “sugar skulls” and other decorations make the display appealing, and even joyous, while at the same time acknowledging the serious aspects of dying. It would be amazing to see displays like this not just in the Mexican Catholic community, but all over the place. It would help to remind the wider culture of the hope there is in Christ.
A second measure we could all take is to design and display awesome Catholic-themed All Hallow’s Eve decorations. Once this is done, we need to put them up on our lawns to compete with the zombies and witches. If you look at online retailers right now, most Christian themed outdoor decorations cover Christmas. There are very few geared toward Halloween, if any. This offers an awesome creative opportunity. The first person out there who develops a 25 foot tall St. Francis inflatable or a motion activated animatronic St. Michael with actual swinging sword will make the front page of The Catholic Messenger.
Dan Russo, editor
