Samhain Wasn't Spooky Until Capitalism Made It Spooky (A Love Letter to the Dead)

Every October, someone asks me how to "celebrate Samhain properly."

And every October, I have to stop myself from asking: Properly according to whom?

The ancient Celts didn't have Pinterest. They had cattle they needed to bring in before winter, root vegetables to store, and a genuine, reasonable fear that the dark half of the year might kill them. Samhain was a harvest festival, a new year celebration, and a time when the veil between worlds was thin enough that the dead could come home for dinner.

Not spooky home. Just... home.

My great-grandmother apparently set a place for her mother every Samhain until she died. Complete with food. Complete with the good china. Complete with a glass of whiskey that she swore was always emptier in the morning.

"Gran, that was evaporation," my mother told her once.

My great-grandmother fixed her with a look that could curdle milk across county lines. "Evaporation doesn't take the good whiskey and leave the cheap stuff."

I've started setting a place at my table too.

Not because I think my grandmother is literally going to show up and critique my cooking. (Though if she did, she'd have notes. She always had notes.) But because the act of making space means something.

It means: I remember you. It means: You're still part of this family. It means: The story didn't end when you stopped breathing.

This year, I'm setting three places.

One for Gran, with her whiskey and her risotto spoon nearby. One for my mother, who would've hated that I'm doing this but would've secretly loved the drama. One for the version of me that died in my marriage—because she deserves to be mourned and released too.

That's the part of Samhain nobody talks about on aesthetic Instagram accounts: it's not just about the capital-D Dead. It's about all the deaths we carry. The person we were before the divorce, the diagnosis, the betrayal. The future that didn't happen. The self we had to bury to survive.

They deserve a place at the table too.

So here's my unsolicited advice for Samhain, from one tired witch to another:

1. Set an extra place. For whoever needs one. Living, dead, or somewhere in between.

2. Leave the porch light on. Literally or metaphorically. Let them know where home is.

3. Tell a story. About someone who's gone. Say their name out loud. Names have power; speaking them is resurrection.

4. Eat something. With your hands, if you can. Feed your body. Your ancestors didn't survive winter so you could skip meals because you're "not hungry."

5. Let it be sad. Grief isn't a problem to solve. It's a door. Samhain asks us to walk through it, sit in the dark for a while, and trust that we'll find our way back.

Tomorrow the veil will thicken again. The dead will return to wherever they wait for us. You'll go back to your email and your deadlines and your check engine light.

But tonight, set a place.

They're always closer than you think.