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Take a look at the gallery for more images of Halloween costumes from the early 20th century.
This photo is from around 1910. (Kirn Vintage Stock / Corbis Historical / Getty Images)
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Halloween costumes of the first half of the 20th century were terrifying.
Drawing on the holiday's pagan and Christian roots, such as a night to ward off evil spirits or reconcile with death, respectively, people often opted for more morbid and serious costumes than those inspired by today's pop culture.
Here, three girls prepare for the Halloween festivities in the College Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1929. (Cincinnati Museum Center / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
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An image from 1938 shows three people going to a party wearing creepy skull masks.
(Dtl./ullstein bild / Getty Images)
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The genesis of Halloween costumes can be traced back more than 2,000 years.
Historians consider the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer and the beginning of the "darkest" half of the year in the British Isles, to be the precursor to the holiday.
(Corbis Historical / Getty Images)
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In the 1960s, suits became lighter and more fun.
Here, a pumpkin-masked guest was captured at a Halloween costume party welcoming American actress Barbara Bates to Britain in 1956. (Thurston Hopkins / Picture Post / Getty Images)
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Lori Nelson was captured at a Halloween party in Los Angeles in 1955. (Michael Ochs Archives / Moviepix / Getty Images)
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Photo circa 1905. (Historic Photo Archive / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
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Photo around 1935 (Imagno / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
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Photo taken at the Chicago Art Institute's Halloween ball in 1949. (Robert Natkin / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
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Photo circa 1950. (Kirn Vintage Stock / Corbis Historical / Getty Images)
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(Kirn Vintage Stock / Corbis Historical / Getty Images)
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(George Rinhart / Corbis Historical / Getty Images)
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(Hulton Deutsch / Corbi s Historical / Getty Images)
(CNN) -
A black and white photo from the early 20th century shows a woman in a rural area of the United States.
His face was covered with a sinister white mask.
In another, from 1930, it shows a tall figure in a field, wrapped in what looks like a white sheet and black ribbon, while a picture from 1938 shows three people driving to a party wearing lurid skull masks.
Halloween costumes of the first half of the 20th century were terrifying.
Drawing on the holiday's pagan and Christian roots, such as a night to ward off evil spirits or reconcile with death, respectively, people often opted for more morbid and serious costumes than today's pop culture-inspired ones. according to Lesley Bannatyne, an author who has written extensively on the history of Halloween.
"Before it became the family holiday as we know it, October 31 was deeply linked to ghosts and superstitions," he said in a telephone interview.
“It looked like an 'out of the ordinary' day, when you were acting outside the norms of society.
"Wearing ghoulish costumes, not inspired by horror like today's, but just plain gruesome, was an essential part," he said.
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The ancient roots of Halloween costumes
Photo from around 1905. (Historic Photo Archive / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
The genesis of Halloween costumes can be traced back more than 2,000 years.
Historians consider the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer and the beginning of the "darkest" half of the year in the British Isles, to be the precursor to the holiday.
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It was believed that, during the festival, the world of the gods was made visible to humans, resulting in supernatural shenanigans.
Some people offered treats and food to the gods, while others wore disguises, such as animal skins and heads, so that wandering spirits could mistake them for one of them.
"Hiding behind their disguises, the villagers often teased each other, but they blamed the spirits," said Bannatyne.
“Masks and cover-ups came to be seen as means to get away with it.
That continued throughout the evolution of Halloween, ”said Bannatyne.
Christianity adopted October 31 as a holiday in the 11th century.
This was part of the effort to reformulate pagan celebrations as their own.
In fact, the name "Halloween" derives from "All Hallows Eve", or the day before All Saints' Day (November 1).
But many of the folkloric aspects of Samhain were incorporated and passed on, including the costumes.
In medieval England and Ireland, people dressed in garb that symbolized the souls of the dead, and went from house to house gathering candies or "soul cakes" filled with spices in their name (a Christian custom known as "souling." ).
Beginning in the late 15th century, people began to wear creepy outfits to personify the spirits or demons of winter, reciting verses, songs, and folkloric works in exchange for food (a practice known as "mummy").
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The Irish influence of Halloween in the USA
When the first wave of Irish and Scottish immigrants began to arrive in what is now the United States in the 18th century, superstitions, traditions, and costumes migrated with them.
Once Halloween entered American culture, its popularity quickly spread, according to Nancy Deihl, a fashion historian and director of the New York University Master of Costume Studies Program.
"People in rural America really embraced their pagan roots and the idea of it being a dark, death-centered occasion," he said in a telephone interview.
“They wore terrifying outfits, which were made at home with whatever was at hand: sheets, makeup, makeshift masks.
Three girls prepare for the Halloween festivities in the College Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1929. (Cincinnati Museum Center / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
"Anonymity was a big part of the locker room," he added.
The goal of dressing should be to be "fully disguised."
In the 1920s and 1930s, people performed annual Halloween masquerades, aimed at both adults and children, in rented salons or family homes.
Costume making sometimes started as early as August, according to Bannatyne.
Right between summer and Christmas, the celebration also seemed to benefit from its timing on the calendar.
"It was a way of coming together before the season change," Deihl said.
"The marketers played a lot in that as Halloween became more commercialized."
Those same decades also saw the emergence of pop culture-influenced costumes, along with the first major costume-making companies.
The J. Halpern Company (better known as Halco) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began licensing images of traditional fictional characters such as Popeye, Olivia, Anita, the little orphan, and Mickey Mouse, around this time, according to Bannatyne.
"People were also fascinated with posing as marginal characters in society," he said, adding that pirates, gypsies and even the homeless became common outfit choices.
Continuing the tradition of old practices like the
souling
and the mummy, Halloween pranks became a common phenomenon in North America.
Sometimes they went to the point of generating vandalism and riots.
By the mid-1940s, the press had called the anarchy of the night (or its broken fences and broken windows, at least) the "Halloween problem," and the costumes may have "partly allowed that behavior," he said. Bannatyne.
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Photo taken at the Chicago Art Institute's Halloween ball in 1949. (Robert Natkin / Archive Photos / Getty Images)
In an effort to discourage criminal harms, local and national officials attempted to rethink the holiday, and dress for it, as an activity for younger children.
The Chicago City Council even voted in 1942 to abolish Halloween and establish October 31 as "Conservation Day."
"Throughout its history, Halloween has undergone ownership changes," Anna-Mari Almila, a researcher in sociology at the London College of Fashion, said by phone.
"His original connection to death became increasingly tenuous, leading to different kinds of [disguises]."
After World War II, as television brought pop culture into family homes, American Halloween costumes increasingly resembled superheroes, comic book characters, and figures of entertainment.
They were also increasingly bought in stores: In the 1960s, Ben Cooper, a manufacturing company that helped turn Halloween into a pop phenomenon, owned 70 to 80 percent of the Halloween costume market, according to Slate.
The 60s, a breaking point for Halloween
It was around this time that adults began dressing up for Halloween again, according to Deihl.
Like children's costumes, its approach was often more fun than scary, and it would eventually be as inspired by "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" as it was by demons or
ghouls
.
A school-age boy stands in his living room for a portrait of himself in a clown costume. (Credit: Kirn Vintage Stock / Corbis Historical / Getty Images).
"Generally speaking, the 1960s marked a change in the way we dress for Halloween," added Deihl.
“Adults, in particular, began to ditch the masks and full coverage, choosing to show their faces.
The costumes became a way of interpreting a lighter, more special version of yourself: showing the world that you 'were' Wonder Woman or Luke Skywalker or whatever. "
But there was still a place for scary outfits, encouraged by a host of horror movies that began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, from John Carpenter's "Halloween" to "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Wes Craven.
These decades also saw gay communities across the state embrace the holiday as an occasion to wear outrageous outfits and hold parades, contributing to a boom in Halloween parties and the popularization of provocative costumes that "in recent decades" , Deihl said, "have often leaned toward the overtly sexy and cheesy."
"Halloween costumes have gone from being a costume to total exhibitionism," Almila said.
"Today, it is a great capitalist celebration completely separate from any vestige of Christianity or paganism, and more focused on expressing people's fantasies, which also explains its worldwide success."
"I think they have certainly become more of a reflection of the times we live in," Deihl added.
“But there are also a lot fewer people making their own Halloween costumes now, and a lot less personal creativity in what you wear, compared to the early days.
“We are all drawing from the same range of costumes available to buy.
And creating a huge waste for that.
I think people would express themselves much more individually if they created their own costumes like they used to.
- This article originally appeared on CNN in October 2019.
Halloween