Immigration and Halloween: The Monsters We Create
Every October, Britain cloaks itself in shadows. Doorsteps flicker with candlelight, fake cobwebs drape over hedges, and shop windows fill with plastic skulls and polyester bats. Children knock on neighbours’ doors in capes and masks, demanding sweets while adults crowd bars in skeleton makeup and witch hats. Halloween is a celebration of fear, a night where we flirt with darkness for fun. But beneath the costumes and cauldrons, Halloween is a cultural mirror — one that reflects how easily fear becomes entertainment, and how quickly fear becomes politics. Halloween’s history itself is a migrant tale. Its roots stretch back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the end of harvest and the thinning of the veil between worlds. Later, Christianity’s All Hallows’ Eve overlaid this pagan ritual, and as centuries passed, migration carried it far from its origin. When Irish immigrants fled famine in the 19th century, they brought Samhain traditions to North America. There, pumpkins replace...