Halloween Costume History
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The culture of Halloween is an American folk ritual that is a window into the diverse ethnic and religious heritage of the people who settled in the United States.
Halloween itself has deep folk roots. It originates with the Celtic Day of the Dead autumn festival of Samhain, celebrated by Celts throughout Europe in ancient times and celebrated still in northern France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and other regions where the Celtic heritage is preserved. The Celts used a lunar calendar and divided the year into two seasons. Winter, the season of the dying, began on Samhain (which roughly translates as "summer's end"), which fell on the full moon closest to 1 November after the harvest was complete.
Victorian Times: During Victorian times, Halloween began to become a quaint holiday with rituals that emphasized children's participation; the festival's folk and religious roots were downplayed. By the early twentieth century, Halloween had become a celebration for children. Community organizations arranged parades and haunted houses. During the 1940s trick or treat was added to the traditions; this custom of begging in costume had very old roots in European culture, and was explicitly transgressive, forgiving behavior that would otherwise be frowned upon. Children would sing or perform mimes in exchange for a treat; they also implicitly threatened to play tricks on householders if a treat was not forthcoming. Homemade masquerade costumes appeared as early as the nineteenth century. Women's magazines printed instructions for making costumes at home. Later these homemade costumes increasingly gave way to commercially produced costumes, a trend that began at the time of the industrial revolution. During the second half of the nineteenth century, advances in technology made commercially produced costumes cheaper, better made, and more varied. The earliest costume themes, all of which continue to the early 2000s, were ghosts, skeletons, devils, and witches. Otherworldly creatures such as Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Dracula are drawn from popular culture.?
Paper Costumes: The Dennison Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts began making paper costumes in 1910. Collegeville, located in Pennsylvania, began as a company that produced flags and later used the scraps to create costumes around 1910 and continued to make early clown and jester costumes. Its namesake founded the Ben Cooper Company in 1927.
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Masks: Many of the masks for the early costumes were produced by U.S. Mask Company in Woodhaven, New York. Their earliest gauze masks, made of buckram, were sprayed with starch and steamed over a mold. Themes included witches, clowns, and animals. In the 1950s vacuum-formed latex masks appeared.
An American Ritual: The costumes produced in America are testaments to the creative powers of ordinary people. The makers demonstrate a technical and aesthetic skill that reflects the handmade techniques used in home production and in factories before mass-machine production took over. These costumes express the personal, social, and cultural identity of the people, and transcend the barriers of class and ethnicity. Halloween has become a uniquely American ritual, not only for children but for adults as well, and it grows in popularity from year to year. As a result, Halloween has also become an important holiday for the local community, with large, elaborate costume parades in San Francisco, New York's Greenwich, and other Villages.