Our Forgotten Halloween: When Corporations Stole the Night from the Working Class…

Before Tesco sold us plastic skeletons, we had something real. Before Amazon delivered mass-produced costumes, we had tradition. Before capitalism commodified the dead, we had community.

As a child, apart from birthdays and the start of school holidays, there were three dates that mattered more than any others: Christmas, Mischief Night, and Halloween. These were the pillars of a working-class childhood, the events we counted down to, the nights that made the rest of the year bearable. But Halloween held a special place. It wasn’t just about sweets or dressing up. It was about dark whispers and scary tales told in hushed voices. It was about the night when the veil between worlds grew thin, when ghosts from the past could cross over, when anything seemed possible, when even the odd lost soul might emerge from the shadows if you knew where to look.

The adults called it All Hallows’ Night, a name that carried weight the modern “Halloween” has lost. It marked the evening before All Saints’ Day, the beginning of Allhallowtide, when our grandparents would speak quietly about those who’d gone before. Some still kept the old ways, lighting candles for the departed, leaving empty chairs at tables laid for meals. The Church had tried to tame it with vigils and prayers, but underneath the Christian veneer, something older persisted. Something that predated churches and saints, that belonged to the land itself and the people who’d worked it for generations. By our time, the costume parties and trick-or-treating had arrived, but we still felt it. That sense that this night was different. That it mattered in ways the adults couldn’t quite explain but we somehow understood.

There was magic in it. Real magic, not the manufactured kind you buy in a Party City. The kind that came from genuine belief, from community stories passed down, from the collective agreement that on this one night, the ordinary rules didn’t quite apply. We made our costumes from black coats and old sheets, from whatever we could find that would transform us into something else. We carved turnips until our hands ached because pumpkins were exotic things we’d only seen in American films. We told each other stories that kept us awake at night, stories rooted in our own streets and histories, not imported from Hollywood.

But look at October 31st now. Look at what it’s become. Just like most folk festive events, it’s unrecognisable. Commercialised. Vandalised. Stripped of everything that made it ours and repackaged as just another retail opportunity. And what we’ve lost in that transformation isn’t just tradition, though that matters. What we’ve lost is community. The bonds that held us together. The shared understanding that this night belonged to all of us, not to whoever could afford the most expensive decorations.

Walk into any supermarket in late September and you’ll be assaulted by it. Aisles of imported tat. Polyester witch costumes made in sweatshops. Plastic pumpkins that’ll be landfill by November. Corporate Halloween, a festival manufactured in boardrooms and sold to us as tradition, an American import designed to extract money from working families already struggling with the cost of living.

But here’s what they don’t tell you whilst they’re ringing up your £40 worth of disposable decorations: Halloween was ours long before it was theirs. Its roots are dug deep into the soil of these islands, a festival born not of marketing departments, but of the land, the seasons, and the quiet solidarity of working communities facing the long, dark winter together.

This was never a night for passive consumption. It was a night of active, communal spirit. Long before “trick or treat” became an excuse to flog overpriced sweets, our ancestors across the villages of Britain marked All Hallows’ Eve as a time when the veil between worlds grew thin. For the Celts, it was Samhain, the end of the harvest and the start of the dark half of the year. But this wasn’t superstition for superstition’s sake. It was profound connection. Families set a place at the table for departed loved ones, acknowledging that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before. The great community bonfires lit on hilltops were collective acts of defiance against the cold and the dark, a way for the whole village to stand together.

And in the industrial towns and mining villages of the North, in Wales and the Borders, in the working-class communities that built this country, a beautiful tradition flourished that speaks to the very heart of who we are: Souling. This was our authentic Halloween, stripped of corporate branding, rooted in mutual aid and collective memory.

Groups of children and the poor would go from door to door, not with plastic buckets demanding branded sweets, but with solemn songs and prayers for the dead. In return, they were given soul-cakes, small, spiced bakes, often marked with a cross, made by hand in the home. Not mass-produced. Not purchased. Made. By people, for people, as an act of community.

Think about that for a moment. This was not a transaction. It was a social contract. The living, many struggling themselves, offered food they’d baked with their own hands. In return, the community prayed for the souls of the departed. It was an act of collective memory and mutual aid, a recognition that we are all part of a chain, both the living and the dead, all bound together by something deeper than money.

In Scotland, Guising saw children earn their treat with a song, a joke, or a poem. You had to give something of yourself to your community to receive something back. You performed. You participated. You weren’t a passive consumer shuffling from house to house with a carrier bag. You were part of something living, something shared.

This wasn’t quaint. This wasn’t backward. This was working-class culture at its finest. Mutual aid. Collective memory. Community solidarity. The recognition that we take care of each other, that the living remember the dead, that we share what little we have because that’s what communities do.

And then capitalism got its hands on it…

Just as with Christmas, just as with every authentic working-class tradition, the soul of this festival has been hollowed out and exploited. The quiet dignity of the soul-cake singer has been replaced by the passive consumer with a Tesco carrier bag. The unique, local lore of the turnip lantern and the divination game has been steamrollered by a homogenised, globalised “spooky” aesthetic, designed not to bring people together but to ring tills.

They’ve taken our festival and sold it back to us, stripping it of its history and its meaning. They’ve turned a night about community and remembrance into just another retail season, another pressure on family budgets already stretched to breaking point. Another opportunity to make working people feel inadequate if they can’t afford the “right” decorations, the “best” costumes, the branded sweets that every other house is giving out.

The pumpkin, an American import, has replaced our own hardy turnips. The mass-produced costume has replaced the homemade disguise. The pre-packaged, individually wrapped sweet has replaced the soul-cake baked with love and shared as an act of solidarity. Every tradition that bound us together has been replaced by something you can buy, something manufactured far away, something designed not to create community but to extract profit.

And the profit is obscene. Britain now spends over £500 million on Halloween annually. Half a billion pounds on plastic that’ll be in landfill before bonfire night. Half a billion pounds on costumes worn once then thrown away. Half a billion pounds feeding a retail machine that gives nothing back to the communities it bleeds dry.

Imagine what half a billion pounds could do for working communities. How many youth centres could stay open. How many food banks could be stocked. How many families could be lifted out of poverty. But instead, it flows upward, to shareholders and executives and corporate boards, whilst the traditions that actually meant something, that actually built solidarity and strengthened communities, are forgotten.

This is what capitalism does to working-class culture. It strips it of meaning, packages it in plastic, and sells it back to us at a markup. It takes the collective and makes it individual. It takes the handmade and makes it mass-produced. It takes the meaningful and makes it consumable. It takes nights that brought communities together and turns them into opportunities for corporations to profit.

And we’re told this is progress. We’re told this is choice. We’re told that having twenty varieties of plastic skeleton to choose from at B&M represents liberation rather than the destruction of something infinitely more valuable than anything you can buy.

But tonight, when you see the flicker of a carved pumpkin on a doorstep, remember the deeper flicker of the Samhain bonfire. Remember the soul-cakers singing in the cold for the souls of the departed. Remember the communities that stood together against the dark, not because they’d bought the right decorations, but because they understood that solidarity and collective memory mattered more than consumption.

Remember those childhood nights when the veil grew thin, when stories mattered more than special effects, when an old sheet and some face paint made you feel more transformed than any £40 Amazon costume ever could. Remember when Halloween belonged to us, to the children running through streets they knew, to the communities that created their own magic rather than consuming someone else’s.

This night was always ours. A night for the many, built on tradition and togetherness, on mutual aid and collective remembrance. Not a packaged product designed to extract maximum profit from minimum meaning. Not another retail season designed to make working families feel inadequate whilst corporate shareholders get richer.

They stole our festival. They commodified our dead. They turned community into commerce and solidarity into sales. But the memory remains. The tradition survives in the corners where capitalism hasn’t completely penetrated. And it’s a past worth not just remembering, but reclaiming.

So this Halloween, bake some soul-cakes instead of buying processed sweets. Carve a turnip instead of buying a plastic pumpkin. Tell your children about Souling and Guising, about communities that took care of each other, about traditions born not of marketing campaigns but of genuine human connection. Tell them about the dark whispers and scary tales that made this night special, about the thin veil and the magic that came from belief rather than purchase. Teach them that we had something real before corporations sold us something fake. Remind them that working-class culture has always been about what we build together, not what we buy alone.

Because the alternative is letting them win. Letting them erase our history and replace it with their profit margins. Letting them turn every meaningful tradition into just another opportunity to extract money from working people, whilst giving nothing back.