It’s coming towards mid-October, and we all know what that means, right? Halloween. And as it approaches, the nation is starting to see again some of the most famous traditions… carved pumpkins, trick or treating and fancy dress. As many people think Halloween is solely an American tradition, the carving of vegetables was actually done first at the other side of the Atlantic. Where people would carve turnips and other foods in order to scare off evil spirits! Trick or treating came from the time when the poorer people went from door to door receiving food such as pastries or cakes. And finally, the traditions of dressing up sprung particularly in Scotland, as people would wear masks or costumes to avoid being recognized by ghosts or spirits that they believed crossed into the physical world… spooky right?
But What’s Changed?
We could say that Modern-day Halloween has changed a little, as now we celebrate Halloween in different ways. Thriller themed parties, Fear festivals and more. We do still keep some similarities of dressing up and carving vegetables though. Back in the 1920’s children weren’t usually dressed up as cute kittens or women as bunny rabbits. It all looked a lot more sinister. Halloween was based on evil back in the day. It was the one day a year that people would dress up to scare away the bad spirits and ghosts that would ‘haunt them’. Now, in the American movies, Halloween appears to be the opportunity for females especially to look as sexy as possible. And kids realizing that they will still get a bag of Haribo and a handful of Quality Street no matter how much effort you put into your costume.
Then and Now…
Fortunately, most of us aren’t living in such poverty anymore. And we don’t have to go knocking on doors for food. So we see Halloween in a much happier and exciting light. This glamourisation has to lead to costumes becoming more fun and ‘cute’. But these costumes are not what we would’ve seen maybe, 100 years ago…
This is what you would’ve seen if you hopped in a time machine and visited the 30th October in 1920. It was pretty alarming and chilling to think such young children celebrated a day with horrifying costumes like these.
Now, when you arrive at an overly crowded Halloween party. You could probably bet on the fact that there will be a group of girls wearing something like this in the corner of the room drinking out of the red cups. That was a slight cliche. Although women with the agenda of scaring away ghouls in 1910 had a different approach in terms of costume….
This creative idea of conjoined twins is intimidating and blood-curdling, yet effective. So I’d say to anyone who’s reading this, running out of ideas and want to try a traditional outfit this year which will leave jaws dropped, you’d better go with this.
Halloween though is bound to change, and although old traditions are being left behind, it leaves room for new ones to appear. So I’m excited to see what Halloween 2017 will bring us.
Follow this link to check out some cool Halloween costumes and decorations yourself: https://goo.gl/PTz61J