Halloween — A Festival of Fear, Art, and Philosophy: From America to Pakistan
By: Raja Zahid Akhtar Khanzada
There’s a peculiar whisper in the autumn air of America. As trees shed their golden leaves like silken robes, it feels as though nature itself is changing costume. And within the rustle of those falling leaves, one can almost hear the footsteps of Halloween, that night of October 31 when humanity stands between light and shadow, between laughter and fear. The glowing pumpkins, the fluttering bats, and the echoing laughter of children — all of it transforms fear into celebration.
Yet Halloween is no longer confined to the United States. Over the years, it has crossed oceans and continents, finding new life in Pakistan’s cities — Hyderabad, Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala, and Islamabad. Cafés, restaurants, and shopping malls now join the spectacle. Children don ghostly costumes and shriek with laughter, while adults, too, seem content to lose themselves in this theatrical display of fear.
Last year, when I was invited to a Halloween-themed restaurant in Hyderabad, I walked into a dimly lit room where fog machines hissed, red lights flickered, and ghouls greeted us at the door. Every table bore a glowing pumpkin. The air smelled faintly of mischief and mystery. And for a moment, I let the child inside me return laughing with those costumed spirits, savoring the strange joy of fear turned to art.
For some, however, this celebration remains unsettling. Conservative Christians call it the “Devil’s Day,” and many Muslims, too, view it as a symbol of Western moral decay. But the origins of Halloween tell a more nuanced story. It began as the Celtic festival of Samhain in ancient Ireland a time when people believed that, as autumn ended, the barrier between the living and the dead grew thin. Bonfires were lit to ward off wandering spirits, circles of light were drawn to keep darkness at bay.
As centuries passed, the humble turnip lanterns of Ireland gave way to pumpkins in America, and the fires of Samhain became the glowing “Jack-o’-Lanterns” that now line suburban porches. What was once ritual became art; what was once fear became festivity.
Dr. Steve Davis, an archaeologist at the University of Dublin, notes that “The Hill of Ward was where the first Samhain fire was lit — the flame that turned fear into tradition, and tradition into celebration.” In that single spark lies the essence of Halloween: to acknowledge fear, but never to become its captive.
In many ways, the modern world has learned to assign emotions to dates. Love has Valentine’s Day. Mothers and fathers are honored on their respective days. And now, fear, too, has found its place on the calendar. Perhaps this is the fatigue of the human soul, our way of packaging vast emotions into manageable rituals. But festivals, if they are to mean anything, should remind us not of the day itself, but of the deeper truth it represents: that humanity has learned to live with love, with death, and with fear, not against them, but alongside them.
In Pakistan, a country where fear once lived in religious allegory and bedtime stories, it has now become an aesthetic , a cultural performance. This transformation is symbolic, even philosophical. Halloween in Pakistan is no longer merely a Western import; it has evolved into an expression of creative play. When children in Hyderabad laugh at paper bats, they are, in their own way, transforming inner darkness into light.
The glowing pumpkins are more than decoration, they are metaphors of human resilience, tiny beacons of creativity flickering in the dark. And just as American children shout “Trick or Treat,” Pakistani mothers smile and say, “Don’t be afraid , it’s all in good fun.”
Perhaps that, in the end, is the truest meaning of Halloween: to turn fear into a game, and darkness into light.
And if one were to describe a Pakistani version of this night, it might sound like this:
“Where pumpkins, laughter, and fear breathe together —
and humankind learns not to tremble, but to smile and live.”
