Exploring Makeup Rituals for Halloween and Samhain

You can probably recall some of your most memorable Halloween moments from childhood. You likely remember some of the most amazing costumes you wore in addition to going from one home to the next to trick or treating. Chances are you went to Halloween parties and may still go to Halloween work functions, or you may have decided to host a party. However, the one thing you need to do when you attend any Halloween function is to wear a costume, and you may wonder why wearing it is part of the Halloween tradition and what some costumes many people wear mean. Let’s discuss why people dress up for Halloween.

The Meaning Behind Halloween Costumes

Many may believe Halloween is a pagan holiday because it originated through Samhain, which Celts started celebrating two millennia ago. And even though Halloween is not a pagan holiday, as it is one that anyone, regardless of faith and culture, can enjoy, Samhain plays a vital role in today’s Halloween celebration, including wearing costumes. As you know, Samhain is a holiday celebrating the rich harvest and the commencement of winter.

The belief is that Samhain is the day when the veil is the thinnest between the spirit and the mortal world. Therefore, it was the day when the dead and the living could mingle. However, because some spirits don’t have the best intentions for the living, people would begin to wear costumes to scare them away. They also feared that spirits and some ancestors would attempt to kidnap them. Samhain rituals included celebrating harvests and offering food to keep the ill-intended spirits at bay because of the positive energy emitted by doing those acts. Low-level spirits do not like anything that is higher vibrational.

However, those who wore costumes in the earlier days to scare away spirits with malicious intentions did not dress in makeup, hats, and other costumes you would see today. They wore animal skins to disguise themselves and to keep away any malicious entities, and they did it to play tricks, too.

Eventually, mumming became common as children wore garbs to appear like frightening creatures, but kids would dress up in exchange for treats. And those kids dressing up in fur for goodies established new Halloween traditions for America as over the 19th century, you would see an evolution of Halloween rituals.

Eventually, communities would create harvest events and gather around to share ghost stories, and they would sing, dance, and keep dressing up to keep warding off the evil spirits from Samhain. Towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, many Irish immigrants came to North America and brought their Halloween traditions to North America, including trick-or-treating in costumes. That was when Halloween costumes evolved from being a form of protection to keep away evil spirits to everyone wanting to be creative and scary.

As you know, many people wore animal skins to ward off evil spirits, but let’s now look at the evolution of standard costumes starting from the late 19th century. Halloween costumes you see today are like night and day from the ones that started becoming popular in the late 1800s in America.

Witch and Ghost Costumes Were Standard in the 1870s to the 1890s

Store-bought costumes in the late 19th century were not a thing. Therefore, people’s Halloween costumes represented what you see associated with the celebration today, such as ghost and witch costumes. They were handmade, involving white sheets of black clothing and black pointy hats. Therefore, when Halloween was approaching, you would find that people would gather up clothing or white bed sheets that would be appropriate for the holiday so they could prepare them to wear as costumes. It was pretty simple at the time, but with the need for more technology and innovation, it is unsurprising that Halloween costumes would be so essential.

Americans in the Early 20th Century Wore Costumes Associated With Asia and the Middle East

You would never see Americans wearing costumes that have associations with other cultures because of the awareness of cultural appropriation in current times. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century USA, people wore costumes associated with Asia and the Middle East. For example, kids would wear costumes related to Chinese culture by wearing clothing and accessories worn in China.

Girls would wear outfits that resembled what their Egyptian peers would wear by wearing apparel, jewelry, and makeup. Those Halloween costumes were typical during Victorian America because they were fascinated with other cultures, mainly Middle Eastern and Asian. You may have seen children occasionally wear those costumes even in the later part of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century, but as mentioned, you will not see it today.

Paper Costumes and Buckram Masks Were a Hit Between 1900 and 1920

Between 1900 and 1920, Halloween was becoming more popular, and even though many people wore Middle…