Why Do Black People Still Celebrate Halloween?

A European-rooted holiday that began with disguised White people welcoming devils into their homes? No thanks.

Bonsu Thompson
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Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash

Aside from Columbus Day, Halloween may be America’s most trash holiday tradition. Yes, it’s even worse than Thanksgiving.

Obviously, Turkey Day’s origin is connected to the genocide of thousands of Native Americans. Yet it has evolved into a time of the year when families gather and tighten. Just as enslaved people converted chitterlings into cultural cuisine, Thanksgiving has become a hateful American offering now associated with love and candied yams. While Halloween offers much glucose, its redeemable qualities are diabetic—either void of sweetness or unable to turn all the sugar into a true positive. It’s just an ugly, European-rooted celebration of evil, which umbrellas demons, trickery, and devil worship.

The genesis of Halloween can be traced back to the Celts, a band of Central European tribes — predominantly in Great Britain — that rose to prominence sometime around 1200 B.C. Long before Ja Rule was used to help swindle socialites and moneyed music fans, quarterly fire festivals were a significant aspect of the Celts’ culture. The most significant was Samhain, a welcoming of the harvest and “dark half of the year.” The time…

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Bonsu Thompson
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Writer for

Bonsu Thompson is a writer, producer, Brooklynite and 2019 Sundance Screenwriters Lab fellow.