By Lily Rockefeller
As Halloween approaches, ghosts and skeletons appear in yards and windows, and we enter the season when our wider culture traditionally engages with the topic of death.
Halloween is, after all, a living remnant of the Western Christian liturgical season of Allhallowtide, when saints, martyrs, and the “departed faithful” are remembered.
While most of us no longer live according to a liturgical calendar, holidays remain an important way for a culture to grapple with certain themes, even a culture as alienated from tradition as our own.
Halloween has become a cultural ritual more widely celebrated, even if it no longer resembles the Christian feast from which it derives its name. Yet it retains a hold on our collective imagination.
Rituals have long provided societies with opportunities to step outside the ordinary rhythms of life and engage with what might otherwise be difficult to confront. The anthropologist Victor Turner, among others, explored how ritual creates a space apart from everyday social structures, allowing communities to return to ordinary life with renewed perspective.
In a similar way, Halloween offers us a way to approach death through costumes, playful symbols, and shared experiences, which bring us closer to a subject we so often keep at a distance.
Cultural rituals surrounding death and remembrance are common around the world. In ancient Roman philosophy, the practice now commonly known as memento mori (“remember that you must die”) became a powerful reminder of life’s impermanence.
The Roman Stoics, including Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, encouraged regular reflection on mortality, not to cultivate despair but to live with greater clarity and purpose.
What would we do differently if we remembered that our time was limited? Which grievances would we let go, which relationships would we tend, and which things we have been postponing would suddenly become urgent?
For the Stoics, remembering death was a way of distinguishing what truly mattered from the distractions that so easily consume our days.
Contemporary Buddhist teachers have brought contemplative approaches to mortality as well as modern palliative caregiving. Roshi Joan Halifax, a Zen teacher and founder of the Upaya Zen Center, has written extensively about presence, compassion, and contemplative practice in caring for the dying. Her “Nine Contemplations” invite practitioners to consider the inevitability of death, the uncertainty of its timing, and the vulnerability of the body.
These practices ask us to stay with the reality of mortality long enough for it to change how we inhabit the present. (Listen to Roshi Joan’s podcast episode to learn more.)
It’s important to note that these practices need not be solely reserved for the ill, the elderly, or those accompanying a loved one through the end of life. Their significance may be greatest when we are healthy, and our lives feel full of possibility.
To contemplate death is not to turn away from life, but to recognize how precious life is. It can also help us fulfill the integrity of being human: to make amends, express gratitude, and become more attentive to the people and commitments that give our lives meaning.
Death remains, for many of us, deeply unsettling. But spiritual and philosophical traditions can offer frameworks for approaching this great unknown with less avoidance and greater courage.
During the Halloween holiday, we might look beyond the tricks and treats to consider the deeper invitation of this season. What might become possible if we allowed ourselves to remember, more regularly and more honestly, that we will die? Perhaps we would discover that remembering our death is also a way of remembering how we want to live.
