Samhain in the Shadow of Snow

There's something I need to get off my chest, and I know it makes me sound like a proper Scrooge, but here goes: I don't particularly care for Christmas. There, I said it. And before anyone starts with the "bah humbug" comments, let me explain why Halloween is infinitely superior (at least in my book).

The Problem With Christmas

Look, I understand why people love Christmas. The lights, the family gatherings, the general atmosphere of goodwill—it's all very nice in theory. But here's where it all falls apart for me: Christmas has become this bloated, inescapable behemoth that starts creeping into our lives earlier and earlier each year.

Just this September (yes, September), I got a "Christmas Hits" Spotify ad. It wasn't even October yet. Halloween hadn't happened. Autumn had barely started. And yet, there it was—the inexorable march of Christmas content bulldozing its way through the calendar like it owns the place.

and the year prior, August!

This isn't just about personal preference (though that's a big part of it). It's about how Christmas has become this commercial juggernaut that overshadows everything else. My anniversary falls in the Halloween period, and every year it gets completely drowned out by festive noise. I know that sounds self-centred, but it genuinely hurts when something personally significant gets buried under mountains of tinsel and forced jollity.

The British high street transforms into a glittering hellscape of consumption from October onwards. Tesco's got mince pies out before the clocks have gone back. John Lewis launches their emotional manipulation advert whilst it's still mild enough to sit outside. The Christmas market in town sets up before Bonfire Night. It's relentless.

The Halloween Advantage

Halloween, on the other hand, knows its place. It arrives in October (where it belongs), creates a concentrated burst of creative energy, and then politely exits stage left when its time is done. There's something refreshingly honest about that.

What I love about Halloween is the atmosphere it creates without the emotional baggage or pretence of being something it's not. There's no obligation to be joyful, no pressure to spend time with family you might not get along with, no expectation that you'll feel a certain way. It's just... itself. Honestly itself.

And as a Pagan, there's something deeply satisfying about Halloween still carrying echoes of Samhain. I'm not out here performing elaborate rituals (though no judgement to those who do), but there's a recognition in Halloween of what this time of year actually is—the transition into darkness, the acknowledgement of death and endings, the honouring of what's passed. Even when people are just carving turnips (or pumpkins, because we've borrowed that from the Americans) and watching horror films, they're engaging with those themes, however unconsciously.

The aesthetic appeals to me as well—probably unsurprising given my special interest in lycanthropy and werewolves. (Yes, I know werewolves aren't strictly Halloween-exclusive, but there's definitely a synergy there.) Halloween embraces the gothic, the spooky, the slightly macabre, and does so without apologising for it. You can dress up as literally anything, carve jack-o'-lanterns, watch horror films, and nobody questions whether you're being sufficiently "festive" or in the right "spirit."

More importantly, Halloween hasn't completely severed itself from its spiritual roots to become a shopping obligation. Yes, there's commercialisation—fancy dress shops, decorations, sweets—but it hasn't consumed the holiday entirely. You can still sense Samhain underneath it all. Christmas? I couldn't find Christ's Mass under there if I tried, and I'm not even looking for it.

The Authenticity Question

Here's the thing that really gets me about Christmas versus Halloween: authenticity. Or rather, the complete lack of it when it comes to Christmas.

Let's talk history for a moment. Halloween's roots trace back to Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter—the darker half of the year. It was about acknowledging death, honouring ancestors, and recognising the thinning veil between worlds. Whilst modern Halloween has obviously been commercialised (I'm not naive), it still retains that fundamental connection to its origins. The themes of death, darkness, the supernatural—they're all there. Halloween hasn't forgotten what it is.

Christmas, on the other hand? Christ's Mass has completely devolved into pure consumerism. I say this as someone who grew up in a non-practising Catholic household—my family had that cultural Catholic background but never forced religion on me, so I was essentially raised atheist as a Gen Z kid—who's gone on their own journey to find my way as a Spiritual but not Religious (SBNR) Pagan. So I've got no religious stake in defending Christmas from a Christian perspective, but even from an outsider's perspective, it's staggering how far Christmas has strayed from any spiritual meaning. Whether you believe in the Christian narrative or not, there's no denying that what was supposedly a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Christ has been utterly gutted and replaced with a shopping festival.

The "true meaning of Christmas" everyone bangs on about? It's buried under mountains of plastic tat, forced consumption, and corporate profits. At least Halloween is honest about what it's become whilst still nodding to its roots. Christmas pretends to be about family and spirituality whilst actually being about how much you spend at John Lewis.

And here's where it gets personal: as a Pagan, I find the whole thing rather galling. The winter solstice, Yule, the actual seasonal turning point—that's what speaks to me spiritually. But Christmas has colonised the entire season, absorbed pagan traditions (the tree, the holly, the feasting), stripped them of meaning, and repackaged them as commercial fodder. The "Christmas" tree bit particularly stings, if I'm honest—my name literally means "born of the yew tree," so symbolically speaking, there's a connection there that feels right to me. Seeing that reduced to just another decoration to sell feels like watching something sacred become cheap. At least Samhain's essence survives in Halloween. Yule got obliterated by Christmas capitalism.

Christmas comes with this unspoken requirement that you must be happy, grateful, and surrounded by loved ones. If you're not feeling it—if you're struggling with mental health (which, let's be honest, I often am), if you're dealing with family complications, if you just don't vibe with the whole thing—you're made to feel like something's wrong with you. You're Scrooge. You're the Grinch. You're the person who "doesn't understand the true meaning of Christmas." Except there is no true meaning anymore—just the expectation that you'll perform gratitude whilst buying more stuff.

Halloween doesn't demand anything from you emotionally. You can engage with its spiritual roots or not. You can participate fully, partially, or not at all. There's no societal expectation that Halloween will somehow fix your problems or make you feel complete. It's just a time when the veil is thin, when we acknowledge the darker aspects of existence, and yes, have a bit of fun with it if we fancy.

The Commercial Creep

I mentioned earlier how Christmas starts earlier every year, and this is genuinely one of my biggest grievances. It's not even about Christmas itself at this point—it's about how commercialised it's become and how that commercialisation refuses to respect boundaries.

Shops start stocking Christmas decorations in September. Christmas music starts playing in Tesco before Halloween has even happened. By the time Christmas actually arrives, I'm so exhausted by it that I can't even enjoy the bits I might otherwise appreciate. The Christmas aisle at Sainsbury's is up before the schools go back. It's mental.

What really drives the point home, though, is that Christmas now effectively begins on 1 November—the very day of Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of summer and the beginning of winter. The word itself roughly translates to "summer’s end," a moment of transition and reflection when the veil between worlds thins and the darker half of the year begins. Yet instead of honouring that liminal space, the modern world bulldozes straight through it. Every media company, retailer, and streaming platform seems desperate to erase Samhain overnight, replacing its quiet reverence with premature Christmas cheer. The moment Halloween ends, the skeletons are literally put back in the wardrobe, the adverts switch tone, and the algorithm decides it’s "festive season." It’s not just commercial overreach—it feels like a kind of cultural desecration, a flattening of something ancient and spiritual into just another marketing opportunity. Samhain, a day meant for stillness and remembrance, has been reduced to nothing more than Christmas’s discarded prologue.

Halloween, for all its commercial aspects (and yes, fancy dress shops and Cadbury definitely cash in), maintains some semblance of proportion. You don't see Halloween decorations in July (well, not usually). The pop-up Halloween shops don't appear in summer. There's a natural rhythm to it that Christmas has completely lost.

And let's be honest—Halloween in Britain is still relatively subdued compared to what it could be. We've not gone full American with it (thank god), so it maintains a bit of restraint. Meanwhile, Christmas has become this months-long assault on the senses and the wallet.

The Sensory Overload

This is going to sound strange, but bear with me: Christmas is loud. Not just acoustically (though the endless Christmas music doesn't help—I can only hear "Fairytale of New York" so many times before I go fucking feral), but sensory-wise in general. It's bright red and green everywhere, flashing lights, constant noise, crowded high streets, the works. For someone who already struggles with anxiety and sensory processing (which, yep, that's me), it's overwhelming in a way that Halloween simply isn't.

Try getting through town in December. Just try it. The Christmas lights are blinding, there's piped music everywhere, every shop is rammed, and there's this underlying current of panic as people frantically buy tat they don't need for people who don't want it. It's exhausting.

Halloween's aesthetic is darker, quieter in some ways. Orange and black are less aggressive than red and green. The decorations tend towards the atmospheric rather than the blindingly bright. Even Halloween parties feel less intense than Christmas gatherings—probably because there's less emotional weight attached to them, and you're not expected to make small talk with distant relatives whilst pretending to like the jumper they bought you.

The Pressure to Perform Joy

I keep coming back to this idea of performance because I think it's central to why I struggle with Christmas. There's this enormous pressure to not just enjoy Christmas, but to be seen enjoying Christmas. To post the perfect family photos, to express gratitude, to participate in traditions whether they resonate with you or not.

And I hate living a performative lie. I genuinely despise it. Halloween gives me the freedom to be myself—if I'm feeling a bit dark and introspective, that fits perfectly with the season. If I want to engage with themes of death and endings, that's what Halloween is for. But Christmas? Even when it's supposedly "time for cheer," it feels like some fucking thoughtcrime that Orwell made up to even suggest you don't want to celebrate Christmas. I'm exaggerating, of course, but only slightly. The social pressure is immense.

It's performance after performance after performance. Perform happiness at the college Christmas party. Perform gratitude when opening presents you didn't want. Perform enthusiasm about turkey and sprouts even when you prefer gammon . Perform the perfect family gathering for social media. Perform, perform, perform. And if you dare to say "actually, I'm not really feeling Christmas this year," you're treated like you've committed some sort of social blasphemy.

Halloween doesn't have that baggage. If you dress up and go to a party, great. If you stay home and watch horror films, also great. If you completely ignore it, nobody really cares. There's no emotional audit at the end of Halloween where people judge whether you did it "right." You're not expected to perform joy you don't feel.

A Matter of Choice

Here's what it ultimately comes down to for me: Halloween feels like a choice, and Christmas feels like an obligation.

When I engage with Halloween—watching An American Werewolf in London a myriad of times, maybe venturing out to a themed event, contemplating finally putting together a proper lycanthropy-related costume one of these years—I'm doing it because I want to. When I engage with Christmas, there's always this undercurrent of "should" rather than "want."

Should spend time with family. Should buy presents. Should decorate. Should feel grateful. Should be happy. Should appreciate the "true meaning" of Christmas. The weight of all those shoulds is exhausting.

The Counter-Arguments

I can already hear the counter-arguments. "Christmas is what you make it." "You don't have to participate in the commercial aspects." "Focus on the bits you enjoy and ignore the rest." And these are valid points, genuinely.

The problem is that Christmas is so ubiquitous that opting out isn't really an option unless you're prepared to be a complete hermit for two months (which, tempting as that sometimes sounds, isn't practical when you're doing a Level 3 IT course). You can't just ignore Christmas when it's everywhere—in shops, on the radio, in conversations, dominating social media. Even if you wanted to celebrate the winter solstice quietly on your own terms, good luck doing that when the entire country has lost its collective mind over whether Marks & Spencer's advert is better than Sainsbury's this year.

Halloween, by contrast, is easy to opt out of if you want to. It has a defined period, and outside of that week or two, it doesn't really intrude on your life. You're not subjected to months of Halloween creep. The local council doesn't put up Halloween lights in September. There's no Halloween equivalent of Mariah Carey emerging from her frozen hibernation to haunt the nation.

Finding Balance

I don't want to end this on a completely negative note about Christmas, because I do understand why it matters to people. The idea of coming together, of taking time to appreciate loved ones, of creating traditions—these aren't bad things in themselves.

What I object to is the enforced nature of it all. The commercial exploitation. The emotional manipulation. The way it sprawls across months rather than staying in its designated time. The expectation that everyone must participate in the same way and feel the same things.

Halloween doesn't ask anything of me beyond "do you fancy having a bit of fun with spooky themes?" And sometimes, when you're dealing with anxiety, depression, thanatophobia (yes, that one comes up a lot for me), and the general chaos of being a 20-year-old figuring out life, that simplicity is exactly what you need.

Let Halloween Be Halloween, and Give Me Back Yule

I've rambled on quite a bit here (shocking, I know), so let me bring this back to the main point: I prefer Halloween to Christmas because Halloween respects boundaries—temporal, spiritual, and personal. It knows what it is, when it should happen, and what it's offering. It hasn't completely abandoned its roots in favor of capitalism. It doesn't demand emotional labor or pretend to be something it's not.

Christmas, for all its talk of peace and goodwill, has become this overwhelming, inescapable presence that starts in September and doesn't let up until early January. It's consumed the entire winter season, absorbed and stripped meaning from actual spiritual practices (like Yule), and turned the whole thing into an anxiety-inducing shopping marathon. By the time it actually arrives, I'm so burnt out that I can't engage with it even if I wanted to.

As a Pagan, I find myself mourning what's been lost. The winter solstice, the return of the light, the actual turning of the season—these have meaning for me. But they've been completely swallowed by Christmas consumerism. At least with Halloween, I can still feel Samhain breathing underneath the modern trappings. The acknowledgment of death, the thinning veil, the darker half of the year—it's all still there if you look for it.

So yes, I prefer Halloween. Give me pumpkins over tinsel, Samhain over shopping centres, and the honest darkness of October over the forced brightness of December any day. And if that makes me Scrooge or the Grinch, well... at least the Grinch had decent alone time up on his mountain, and honestly, that doesn't sound half bad.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go plan my costume for next Halloween. I'm thinking something lycanthropic—surprise, surprise. Though to be honest, I've been saying that for years and haven't actually done it yet. Maybe this will be the year I finally commit to it properly. And maybe I'll actually acknowledge Samhain properly this year, light a candle for the ancestors, spend some time reflecting on the year that's passed. You know, engage with the actual spirit of the season rather than what capitalism tells me I should be feeling.

That's what Halloween—and Samhain beneath it—offers: authenticity. And that's something Christmas lost a long time ago.