The spellbinding history of Halloween costumes and how they've evolved

From spooky to sexy to just plain bizarre, the custom of dressing up every Oct. 31 has had a lot of twists and turns. Here’s a look back at the history behind Halloween costumes and getting all decked out for the scariest night of the year.

Early roots in Europe

What we know as Halloween began with the ancient Celts, who celebrated a holiday called Samhain beginning on Oct. 31 to mark the end of harvest and the start of the winter season. The revelries included feasting, tales of ghost and spirits and perhaps animal sacrifice. Little is known about these celebrations since the ancient Celts passed down their histories orally, leaving no written records, but Lisa Morton, who has authored several books on Halloween, including Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, tells Yahoo Life there’s no evidence that costumes were part of the festivities.

Catholic missionaries arrived in Ireland around the 5th century, but rather than stamping out Samhain they instead co-opted it, incorporating the holiday into their own traditions and moving the Catholic feast of All Saints’ Day so that it was celebrated on Nov. 1. Morton says All Saints’ Day had a “very minor tradition” of costuming that was practiced sporadically among some parishes, with some congregates dressing up as saints for the day or having a small pageant in the church.

But when the Catholic Church added another feast day called All Souls Day, which was celebrated on Nov. 2, a more widespread costuming tradition began to take form. Beggars would go from house to house offering to say prayers for the souls of deceased loved ones in purgatory in exchange for “soul cakes” — small treats that had been specially made for the occasion. Eventually, children wanted to get in on this activity, too.

“Kids saw this happening, so the kids would dress themselves as beggars and put soot on their faces and so forth and offer to do the same thing — go from house to house and offer to say the prayers for the loved ones,” Morton says.

The practice of going door to door for soul cakes was pretty much gone by the 19th century. But in England children around that time began to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day — which commemorates a failed plot to blow up Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605 — by dressing up and begging for supplies to burn effigies.

“It was very simple. They would dress themselves up in big top hats or whatever they found in the attic, maybe paint their faces with soot, and people would give them money or firewood for the celebrations,” Morton says.

Late 19th century: Costuming in America

During the Victorian era, dressing up in costumes was incredibly popular, but Halloween didn’t have a monopoly on the trend yet.

“People dressed up for all kinds of parties, for school pageants, for other holidays,” Morton says. “Costuming was very popular at the time in general. There was no strict thing where it was associated only with Halloween.”

Morton says one Christmas tradition called belsnickeling, which mostly took place in parts of Canada and the northeastern United States, involved people concealing their identities with masks and costumes, going door to door and performing little skits in exchange for treats from their neighbors.

“Belsnickeling is actually the closest thing we have to trick-or-treat, but there probably is not a real direct tie to that,” she says.

Halloween was just getting introduced to the U.S. at that point, as Irish and Scottish immigrants came to America in droves and brought their traditions with them. One aspect of Halloween that was particularly appealing to American kids was the mischief-making.

“They loved that whole idea of playing pranks at the end of fall and on Halloween,” Morton says. “And by the time we get into the early 20th century, prank-playing was a huge deal in America. That and parties were the parts that really caught on with everybody in this country.”

Early 20th century: Trick-or-treating emerges

By the 1930s, Halloween pranking wasn’t just an innocent, rural activity. As the U.S. quickly urbanized the antics became more destructive — and expensive, with young people setting fires and wreaking havoc on cities. In their efforts to curtail the vandalism, civic groups started handing out pamphlets to homeowners advising them on how to appease the pranksters.

“One of the tips was to hold a costume party for the kids,” Morton says. “And these costumes were very simple. It would be like, ‘Hey, just give them a sheet when they come in the door, and they get to be a ghost.’”

The idea of “buying off” the pranksters was very successful, and started to spread. This was also during the Great Depression, so costumes and treats were basic and homemade.

“The first time that we hear the phrase ‘trick-or-treat” recorded is in a 1927 newspaper mention from Canada, but it does not mention the kids being in costumes. So the whole thing with trick-or-treating and costumes and saying the phrase and getting the treats, we don’t really have that established until about 1939, which is when we see that first [U.S.] mention of it in a national magazine article. And at that point it’s becoming really popular.”

Post-WWII: "The magic of American retail"

With sugar shortages and American industry focused on war production, Halloween and trick-or-treating went mostly on hiatus during World War II. But in the post-war years the holiday came back with a vengeance.

Television and “the magic of American retail,” Morton says, really gave Halloween a boost. For the first time candy companies could mass produce goodies that saved parents — at that time, usually mothers — from having to labor all day in the kitchen making treats. Meanwhile, the emergence of costume companies like Ben Cooper gave kids endless options for dressing up.

A major turning point in Halloween costuming came in 1957, when Universal released all of their classic horror films to a television syndication package called “Shock Theater.”

“Suddenly, television is now full of the classic horror movies and kids are seeing those and now they’re saying, ‘I want to be Dracula’ or ‘I want to be the Wolf Man’ or ‘I want to be Frankenstein,’” Morton says. “And the costume companies really pick up on that, and that becomes a really big part of Halloween at that point.”

1970s: Halloween is "reclaimed by adults"

Monster-mania had been big with kids for several decades, but it wasn’t until the late ’70s, Morton says, that Halloween started to get “really scary” with the emergence of haunted attractions and the release of slasher films like John Carpenter’s 1978 movie, Halloween. These pop culture favorites helped the holiday evolve into being a celebration that adults could enjoy, too.

“Halloween kind of gets reclaimed by adults in the ’70s and ’80s,” Morton says. “I think at that point is when we start to see the rise of adult costuming.”

New York’s Village Halloween Parade, which took place for the first time in 1974, also helped adult dress-up go mainstream. Elaborate, over-the-top costumes became in vogue thanks to members of the LGBTQ community, who helped shape the parade’s identity.

“Times were changing. People were starting to come out,” Jeanne Fleming, the parade’s artistic and producing director, said of the parade’s origins in a 2018 interview with Logo TV. “In those days, the West Village was filled with creative people and the gay community was centered there. So in many ways, at that time, this was Pride.”

2000s: The rise of "sexy costumes" and going global

By the early 2000s, adult costuming saw a surge in “sexy” costume popularity with the emergence of slinkier versions of everything from nuns to animals to fictional characters.

As Lindsay Lohan’s character in the 2004 film Mean Girls famously observed: “In the real world, Halloween is when kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In girl world, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it."

In 2006, the purchasing director for BuyCostumes.com told the New York Times that perhaps 90 to 95% of their female costumes had “a flirty edge to them,” and that sexy costumes were so popular the company had to break its "sexy" category into three subdivisions.

The trend has continued, with lingerie and costume retailer Yandy establishing a reputation for sexualizing seemingly innocuous concepts, from 2014's "Sexy Lobster" to its current "Pretty Pencil" ensemble and a racy Wordle-inspired get-up.

“My personal favorite sexy costume was 'Sexy Corn' — which, unsurprisingly, wasn't a bestseller,” Morton says of the 2013 Yandy ensemble.

She explains some feminists have argued that these costumes can be a way for women to mock the overly sexualized images of women in advertising and the media, or to experiment with how they express their sexuality.

“I think that in terms of the sexy costuming coming in, it is something that a lot of people find empowering,” Morton says.

But some have worried that the trend encourages the misrepresentation and sexualization of young girls, which can have damaging effects such as depression, eating disorders and low self-esteem.

In 2018, Dr. Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry, wrote that parents should start having conversations with their daughters about the pressure to wear sexy Halloween looks, “before she is already mowed over by a peer group.”

“Is the Halloween costume a conversation worth having or even a battle worth waging? I would say yes, it definitely is,” she said.

In 2013, Walmart crossed a line with its "Naughty Leopard" costume marketed to toddlers, which they pulled from stores after backlash from parents.

But it isn’t just risqué outfits that have gained steam in the 21st century. Around this same time, Morton says, the Americanized version of Halloween and costuming spread like wildfire to different countries — thanks in part to Halloween-themed episodes of syndicated American sitcoms, as well as fast-food chains exporting the holiday with merchandise like McDonald's Halloween-themed Happy Meal buckets.

Even in some countries with devout religious observances, the now-secular holiday and its accompanying costumes and revelry have been embraced and become an annual fall tradition.

“It has been really surprising to see it catch on in some really unexpected places,” Morton says.

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