Halloween Costumes Essay

Halloween for many Americans means dressing up as an animal, famous star, cartoon, etc. and going trick-or-treating with their family or friends. However, not many people know the meaning behind Halloween. It is always celebrated on October 31st no matter what day it lands on. Many people do not know the tradition of Halloween and where it came from. In fact, I did not know either until my High School teacher told me that Halloween came from Ireland. The purpose of dressing up is so that the spirits and demons cannot recognize human beings. Many people thought the dead would arise that day and that’s why people used masks to distinguish themselves. In addition, trick-or-treating was a way to give candy, food, or money, but throughout the years it has changed. People trick-or-treat to receive candy or get tricked, which is always fun for children and even adults. People have a choice of either staying in their homes and just give candy to people who knock on the door or receiving candy. If the light of the front door is on or the house is decorated, then it is a sign that you can knock on their door. On Halloween Jack-o-Lanterns is believed that he tricked the devil, and when he died he was rejected in heaven and hell; for that reason, he roams our world and we represent him by carving pumpkins. Halloween dealt with spirits

Halloween: the holiday where as kids we couldn’t wait to go door to door to achieve the golden goal of a full bag of candy. Halloween soon turns into a question mark for teens; in an instant, there is a change of when it is ‘appropriate’ to go trick-or-treating and when you should just move on. Are you the one who thinks Trick-or-treating is lame or the one who still walks around your neighborhood every year -- no matter how many dirty looks you may get. What teenagers decide to do on Halloween varies: going to a party, passing out candy, staying home are a few popular options. Throughout my highschool experience I have been able to witness and experience all different types of halloteens, each with their own traits.

Every year millions of kids get dressed up, knock on doors, and beg for candy. With Halloween just around the corner, you all are probably wondering where this strange tradition came from. Every year I have experienced this holiday and have done research on this topic. According to a 2014 Smithsonian.com article, stated by Natasha Geiling, in just one year Americans spent over six billion dollars on candy, costumes, and ghoulish decor in anticipation for Halloween. Many people think all Halloween is about dressing up and going trick or treating but there's more to it than that. The roots and variations from all around are what makes Halloween what it is today. In order to understand this holiday, we will go into the history of Halloween, how it's celebrated around the world, and superstitions revolving it.

Halloween is the point at which you cut Jack o' Lanterns out of pumpkins, design the house with a ghoulish topic, parties, and go trap or treating way to entryway wearing ensembles. Halloween is praised by both kids and grown-ups. Kids spruce up in

Celebrated on October 31st, the festival of Halloween (also known as Samhain) includes dressing in costume, trick or treating, and decorating. Tracing back in history Halloween is considered to be one of America’s oldest holidays, and is still celebrated today. Halloween is believed to come from Celtic rituals. Celtics believed the cosmological myth of Saman (Lord of the Dead). Saman would call on the souls of the people that passed away that year to take them to the afterlife or underworld; the Celtic underworld identifies with the Christian Hell. In order for the spirits to believe they were on their own, the living would wear costumes and mask their identities, along with fairies, witches and demons. This functions as a cosmological myth because it provides a creation story and framework in which this universe occupies and includes many other realms of existence. Another tradition that followed was to give food to the Saman, to persuade him to be more tolerant while he judged the dead ancestors of the living, which he would chose to take to the underworld. In this essay I will further investigate what the origins of Halloween consist of and how it offers reasoning for trick-or-treating. Also I will examine how trick-or-treating, which is still continued today, is connected to ancient Celtic festivals.

These traditions were connected with the lower class at the time and so they were also connected with crime, rowdy behavior and other stereotypes the upper class believed about the poor. Of course people who were part of the upper class did not like this and by the 1870s they had turned Halloween into a holiday to make children into “good American citizens.” Halloween was now targeted towards children and because of that families were encouraged to celebrate it at home where food, games and other entertainment would have adult supervision. By doing this children were expected to understand the values society holds, while also learning about their proper gender roles. At this point we are able to start to see how Halloween became so heavily influenced by gender roles/stereotypes and how that led to the over-sexualized holiday it is now. Trick or treating and wearing Halloween costumes became popular in America around the 1920s and by the 1950s children’s costumes were extremely reflective of their sex. (Bannatyne.) Girls were dressed as princesses and angels while boys were army men, hobos and so on. However, as cute and adorable as this is or may have been, this creates a very thick line between genders. When that line is present it is alluding to children that

[3]During, Samhain (sow-in), the tribal people would pay tribute to their conquerors and then the ancient mounds might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld. differences as well. Basically, both the festival of Samhain (sow-in) and our present day Halloween involved costumes and they were both celebrated in the fall. The differences, however, outnumber the similarities. Costumes had change from a disguise that was terrifying to the eye and fearful to costumes made in a factory somewhere that is sometimes at an outrageous price. Girls costumes have changed the most, they used to cover your whole body to something skimpy and ridiculous. For example, a sexy Donald Trump costume….it even sounds ridiculous. In Conclusion, Halloween has changed over the years but some traditions have remained the same but not for the same

Halloween is not only one of the most popular holidays, but is also one of the oldest, and can be dated back to about 2,000 years ago. It is also known to have started

Halloween is a night that children can dress and act like something they are not and allows them to travel around town receiving candy. Halloween allows the elderly a time to interact with children and gives people a break from normality. Even though the popularity of Hallowing is slimming,

Halloween was a day to celebrate the deceased, followed by a time to pray for them. B. Halloween also comes from the sacred Celtic festival, Samhain. 1. On the eve of Samhain, the Celts believed the dead, both ghosts and demons, were allowed to roam free.

What are you going to be for Halloween this year? If you're planning to attend or throw a costume party, it's time to start thinking about costumes right now. Since this isn't elementary school, there are a lot more options these days than the full coverage pumpkin costume or the witch's costume you wore in the third and fourth grade.

In Latin American countries Halloween is a three-day festival known as El Dia de los Muertos, the days of the dead. It’s been around since prehistoric times, and it’s always been used to honor the dead. However, it’s a happy holiday meant for celebration. Families erect an altar in their homes to honor the dead, bringing food and drink to it throughout the holiday. It’s also common to tend to the graves of relatives. There are parades on streets where people wear skeleton costumes during these

Over the years Halloween has drastically changed for me as far as how I celebrate it. My mother raised my brothers, sister and I as Jehovah’s Witness, so growing up we really did not get to participate in any sort of activities that involved the concept of Halloween. In school, we would be removed from the classroom and put into a separate classroom to read or to do homework, because the whole class was doing some sort of activity or creating Halloween deportations to take home. So probably throughout all of elementary school, this was how it was celebrated in my family. As we got older, my older brother married and had a baby; well his wife celebrated all the holidays and did what was “normal” for the holidays. So as we were surrounded by her and her family we slowly started to do go trick or treating with my niece and helping her pick out a costume. So we kind of started to do what was normal, we wanted to fit in. I remember that all the kids in elementary school would ask why I was put into a separate classroom. More towards the time I got to high school and graduated, we really started to participate more and actually dress up. My mother never really got offended. But she would ask why we would dress up? I think as I got older I just changed my mind set and just did what I wanted to do. Even up to know I do not have a

Furthermore, there are many traditional rituals and superstitions associated with Halloween. Since the ancient Celts thought the nonliving roamed the earth, they created costumes out of animal pelts to ward off evil spirits. Fortunetelling and the utilization of large bonfires for sacrifices and purification were also early customs. After the Christianization of the holiday to commemorate saints and martyrs, the same festivities, bonfires, and guising remained, but October 31st was renamed All-Hallows Eve. This inevitably turned into Halloween. Similar to European traditions, America’s Halloween has also evolved throughout the years. Halloween’s recognition was originally restricted in colonial America due to its non-Christian beliefs and practices, and it was practiced at a more local level. According to an online source, “The first celebrations included ‘play parties,’ public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead and tell each other’s fortunes, dance, and sing” (“History of Halloween”). Festivities were akin to European traditions, but also included ghost stories and pranking. Beginning in the twentieth century, Halloween

Superstition had it that visiting ghosts had the possibility to disguise themselves in human form such as beggars and then they would knock upon your door at Samhain and ask for food or money. If you were kind enough to help them everything was fine but if you turned them away empty-handed you asked for the anger of the spirit and could be cursed or haunted. Another Celtic myth says that if you dressed up as a ghoul you could fool evil spirits into thinking that you were one of them and in this way they wouldn’t try to take your soul. Around the late 50s trick-or-treating became a Halloween tradition in the U.S. and was brought over from Europe by Irish immigrants in the early