“What are you being for Halloween?”
It’s a question you’ve heard a million times before, especially now as we get closer and closer to the big night.
Maybe you want to go all out for your friend’s Halloween party. Maybe you’re staying home and passing out candy to trick-or-treaters who come door to door. Whether you’re spending your entire paycheck at Spirit Halloween or you’re just grabbing the first thing you see in your closet, I’m sure you’re planning a Halloween costume this year.
Costumes have always been an essential part of the Halloween season. But did you ever stop to think about why?
Halloween was not always celebrated the way it is today.
Halloween was first known as the festival of Samhain. The date of the first celebration is unknown, but it is said to go back almost 5,000 years. This festival was an ancient Celtic pagan tradition that marked the beginning of the darker, colder months and the end of the bright, warm summer. Many people believed that during this time, the veil between the spiritual world and the human world was extremely thin, and that the spirits of the dead would return to Earth for one night.
Many humans would offer up different foods to the spirits as a sort of peace offering to keep themselves safe. They would also dress up in scary costumes as a way of warding off evil. This became the tradition that we are all familiar with today.
In ancient times, Halloween costumes were traditionally very scary so that humans could disguise themselves from the spirits and hide their identity. The idea was that if a human was seen in costume, a spirit would mistake them for one of their own and leave them alone.
It wasn’t until the Great Depression that the tradition of wearing costumes became more commercialized.
On Halloween night in 1933, “hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed off telephone poles and engaged in other acts of vandalism across the country,” according to History.com. This chaotic outburst was most likely in response to the devastation the United States was facing at the time. Adults saw these actions and decided they needed to do something to stop them. They began to organize events for the kids, like trick-or-treating and costume parties, as a way to distract them.
Soon after, the focus of Halloween shifted away from sinister spirits and towards something much more fun. Large corporations and stores began designing and producing costumes of many popular characters from children’s shows and books.
In the years to follow, costumes became popular for adults, too. People would dress up as popular political figures, celebrities and even their favorite movie characters.
As the tradition of Halloween has changed over time, costumes have evolved with it. Now, they have become a reflection of the culture surrounding the time period. They can be used to tell what’s trending, who the prominent figures are and the general interests of the population. What was once a way of disguising one’s identity is now a way of expressing it.