Reason behind the scary attire during Halloween

What is Halloween all about, and why do we dress up in scary costumes, with creepy face makeup and mostly scary coloured contact lenses? The answer here is a little complex. Like many other holidays we celebrate, Halloween started a long time ago and has been dated back to the Celtic holiday of Samhain and the Iron Age. It is believed that on a certain day, the spirits passed into the next realm. This happened on Oct. 31. In a way, this makes sense as it is the last day of the Celtic calendar that is before winter, which is known for killing off nature and its crops. Now to the question of why Halloween décor is quite creepy in nature goes back to the Oct. 31 as being the day to honour the spirits and to steer off the less than desirable ones.
This helps to explain why most of the costumes are on the offensive side as back then most people wore creepy outfits so they could honour the tradition and to scare away the demons and their spirits. People tried making their costumes as scary as possible even to the extent of having white contact lenses giving it a much creepier look. From way back, when the practice has now turned into something completely different like wearing cartoon character costumes.
Now moving onto when the people got into dressing up in order to celebrate Halloween as the holiday we know of now started in Ireland. The Scottish participated in which was known as guiding. While this tradition varied, one thing was inevitable that the Halloween holiday was about ghosts, spirits and demons and the costumes were running parallel with that.

The costumes then started turning into what we know them as now from back in the 20s which was thanks to many companies who realised that the costumes that were worn on Halloween could be anything that anyone wanted not just creepy costumes. The Halpern Company went searching for the licensing rights to bring out costumes in different characters. Ben Cooper was the one to blame for changing the game.
Cooper tried to license the characters before they grew big and he ended up being the king of Halloween by the 1960s. It seemed that the pop-culture related costumes had hit the shelves quicker than you could even imagine.

Black cats and Halloween

Black cats are a symbol that represents the spooky side of Halloween. If a black cat crosses someone’s path, you will be given bad luck. In medieval times, the black cats were known as familiars of the witches, and this belief came from bad luck being associated with bad luck.

Burning nuts

In Scotland, the women who were single were told to choose a pile of hazelnuts, and each would represent a potential mate. They would then be instructed to throw them into the fire on the night of Halloween. The hazelnut that burned and did not pop was the one that represented a future husband.

Before you decide to celebrate Halloween and dress up in something scary or something more down-tuned, think about how much Halloween has changed and just how it started. If you are stuck for ideas on what to dress up as you can still go for the simple white sheet ghost to honour the long-forgotten past.

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