Halloween has never been my favorite holiday, but as I was warned when we moved here last November, in Georgetown it is a serious affair. For the entire month of October, giant spiders scale the rowhouses, ghosts and cadavers dangle from trees, cackling animatronic witches guard the cemetery and the local bed and breakfast, parking spaces are “reserved” for ghostbusters and on every other block there’s a 12-foot-tall skeleton waiting to send my two-year-old into shrieks of delight.
Then there are the pumpkins: every shape, size and color, stacked by the dozen in tasteful arrangements on every step of every stoop in town. How does everyone pull this off, I asked my real-estate agent, my one-stop source for all Georgetown-related trivia. There’s a pumpkin-delivery service, of course. For $1,300, you can “bring the full pumpkin patch experience right to your doorstep.” As one friend quipped when passing a particularly bountiful stoop, I’m pretty sure these pumpkins cost more than my monthly rent.
Call me a Halloween convert: I confess I love it. I proudly spent more money than my husband needs to know on the pumpkins lining our driveway and the skeletons climbing our trellises. It’s a joy to see the season through my toddler’s wide eyes and to join in the silly traditions of our new neighborhood, where, it seems, everyone – not just the politicians – has a lot of skeletons in their closet. Indeed, as you walk the festive brick-paved sidewalks here, you could almost forget the political fights happening just across Rock Creek and the fact that half the neighborhood is currently furloughed. Almost.
But a few stubborn neighbors won’t let you forget it. For them, it seems, Halloween isn’t about the children – it’s an opportunity to virtue-signal.
“Elect a clown. Expect a circus.” Under blood-stained, striped banners in a front yard on a prominent corner, this sign sits amid a sea of clown-nosed skeletons, labeled the “White House of Horrors.” Each skeleton has been given a name and a costume. There’s Stephen Miller, dressed like a ghoul or Dementor. “Cosplay Kristi,” with a brown wig and camouflage vest (American flag upside down). Pete Hegseth, or “Secretary WhiskeyLeaks 👊🇺🇸🔥,” in an army jacket. Scott “Scottie” Bessent with a tee shirt expressing his love of tariffs. RFK Jr., “Secretary of Sick,” a monkey perched on his shoulder with a stethoscope.
And, of course, skeletal Trump himself, with a blond wig and full clown regalia. “Carnival Barker-in-Chief. Don the Con. Tangerine Palpatine. Cadet Bone Spur. Commander-in-Cheese.” Gosh, so clever!
A mere month after the biggest political assassination in decades, this Georgetown resident is living out a blood-soaked fever dream of dead political rivals. It’s crass, it’s incendiary, and it’s not particularly funny. Whatever it means to be in the Halloween spirit, this ain’t it.
Nor is it neighborly. Scott Bessent and RFK Jr. both live practically within spitting distance of this house. They’re big boys, of course, and can handle some dark satire. They’ve seen worse: indeed, just weeks ago police responded to a bomb threat at Kennedy’s house. But what sort of message does it send to our children – who are, after all, the primary audience for these Halloween decorations – about how to coexist with those with whom you disagree?
Remarkably, in a district with the highest percentage of Democrats in the nation (75.6 percent at last count), Georgetown is not a political monolith. On the contrary, it is the least politically predictable place I’ve ever lived. One minute, you’re commending a neighbor for lowering his flag to half-mast in honor of Charlie Kirk; the next you’re waving to Alejandro Mayorkas. At our avowedly apolitical local church, you can find yourself seated simultaneously behind a high-ranking member of the Trump administration and beside a woman carrying an Obama “Hope” tote bag. And in my (admittedly limited) experience, the people here who don’t work in politics – the butchers, the real-estate agents, even the consultants – are far less political than, say, your average New Yorker, presumably because to do good business in this town, you have to get along with everyone.
So there’s a real opportunity here to have conversations across the aisle with the person living across the street from you. Conversations that could change minds and even change policy. As Henry Kissinger famously observed, “The hand that mixes the Georgetown martini is time and again the hand that guides the destiny of the western world.”
But conversations are hard, and virtue-signals are easy. Ever since the Secretary moved in last spring, RFK Jr.’s immediate neighbor has staged a series of silent protests, devoting a prominent window display first to autism and then to DC statehood. Now, the house is decorated for Halloween, but a skeleton in the window holds a sign: “WISH I HAD TAKEN MY VACCINE!” And the house next to that one has followed suit, its front yard decorated with fake gravestones, one of which says, “I did my own research.”
On the other side of the anti-vax skeleton, Kennedy’s neighbor has hung another sign in spooky letters: “WELCOME.” But who is welcome, exactly? Will Kennedy’s grandchildren be welcome if they ring the doorbell on Halloween? Will my daughter?
The Gospel commands us to love thy neighbor – and not just the good neighbor who helps you with your recycling. Love the bad neighbor who blasts loud music into the night. And love the neighbor whose politics you abhor. This doesn’t mean you can’t criticize your neighbor: Jesus himself practiced tough love, and tough love requires criticism. But it does mean you should offer those criticisms respectfully and in good faith.
Maybe that’s what it means to be in the Halloween spirit. This spooky season, ring a neighbor’s doorbell and have a conversation, even an argument. And welcome any neighbor who knocks at your own door, with a bowl of candy… and, for the grown-ups, a freshly mixed martini.
