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Halloween has been a cherished tradition throughout the District and nation, with people donning costumes, eating candy, and participating in festivities. But as safety concerns grow and city landscapes shift, some African Americans are celebrating with caution during the Halloween season.According to a 2023 study on holidays from Think Now, Black Americans are less likely to celebrate Halloween than other races. While there are a number of reasons that go into some African Americans forgoing Halloween celebrations, there are unique factors in the District that contribute to the shift in how Black Washingtonians celebrate the late October holiday.ANC 8E05 Commissioner Duane Moody has fond childhood memories of traditional Halloween celebrations in the District.
“My earliest memory of Halloween was … going out trick-or-treating in not just your apartments and your apartment building but also walking the actual entire neighborhood,” said Moody.A D.C. native, Moody reflected on how he’s seen Halloween evolve for Black Washingtonians. “What I have seen to become now [Halloween] is more compartmentalized … they’ll go to an event at a recreational center or at some … organizational building. I even had a lot of my candy literally laid out in front of my stoop in a big tin bowl for anyone to take and no one came around and got candy,” Moody told The Informer.
How Halloween Traditions Came to the U.S. and the Cost of CelebratingLeaving goodies for people to grab has been part of the Halloween tradition from the beginning.According to the History Channel, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought what is now Halloween to the U.S. in the 19th century.
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Halloween comes from All Hallows Eve, which is a Celtic festival that celebrates the end of harvest. In Celtic tradition, people believed the dead would return to earth on All Hallows Eve, so they wore costumes, lit bonfires, and left food out to please and ward off the ghosts. Young people gather at MARS Halloween Bash on Oct. 23 sponsored by the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the Metropolitan Police Department, and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. For residents concerned about safety while trick-or-treating, there are other options to celebrate Halloween such as trunk-or-treating, fall festivals at local churches, recreation center events, and more. (Ja’Mon Jackson/The Washington Informer)Those traditions made their way to America and eventually became trick-or-treating, as over time, people began going door to door, dressed as ghosts, asking for food.Halloween is the second-largest commercial holiday, after Christmas. This year, Americans were expected to spend over $4 billion on costumes and another $3 billion on candy according to a report from Statista. Moody expressed that economic issues could affect how Black D.C. residents are celebrating major holidays, especially those in impoverished communities.According to Census Reporter, The median household income in Ward 8, a predominantly Black area, is about $48,609, which is less than half of the median income for the entire District, which is $101,027.
“When you’re in the bottom cast of the economic system, unfortunately, more crime is going to unfortunately persist in your neighborhoods as well as the surrounding suburbs. Because of where we are economically, that is why we are not able to…be normal and celebrate particular holidays, even if you celebrate it or not,” Moody explained.Halloween Safety The ANC commissioner said he also believes crime has caused fear for many Black D.C. residents, also changing the way they celebrate Halloween, adding his constituents are mostly concerned about theft and vandalism. Safety played a major factor in D.C. resident Tim Howard’s household growing up when Halloween came around.“We didn’t celebrate Halloween,” said Howard, a retired educator. “It wasn’t safe to be out. When I was growing up the only safe place to be at for Halloween was Georgetown.”In the 1980s, when Howard was young, the District faced high crime rates. By 1989, the annual murder rate was over 400.
Now, while crime rates in D.C. are down 35%, some still do not feel safe in their neighborhoods which could affect how they celebrate holidays like Halloween. However, Howard feels that fear of crime is often exaggerated and doesn’t affect Halloween festivities. “I don’t think the violence affects us being out. I think the media and their portrayal of violence is what causes people to assume that there’s more violence going on than there actually is,” Howard said.Connecting With the Community through Halloween CelebrationsCaprice Casson, community organizer of over 15 years and candidate for ANC 7E04, said she believes increasing community engagement will help to restore Halloween for Black Washingtonians.She said the holiday offers a sense of community “highly necessary for us because a lot of times individually those resources aren’t there for various reasons.”
“Being able to organize to offer opportunities to community members that do not have an option to go somewhere else or to do it by themselves. We’ve had trunk-or-treats, we’ve turned a garden into a haunted house. We’ve tried… different ways to do Halloween engagements,” Casson explained.While Halloween celebrations have changed for some Black D.C, residents, many like Howard still feel the holiday is still generally an overall festive day for all.“I think it’s different [for Black families], but it’s not different to the point where it’s worse,” Howard said. “I think there are people who want to make sure that their kids have those experiences that they didn’t have. … Having more options just makes it better.”
Source: Washington Informer
