Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

In recent years I've been getting more and more into dressing up in costumes, when in the past I kept it pretty simple.

This year I went to Spirit Halloween and picked out a really cute witch hat, went to good will and picked out a couple dresses to integrate into my costume. It's really coming together nicely! I also have some necklaces and earrings. I'm debating on getting nails and make up...and I know that's not normally my thing...but for SOME reason I feel like going all out to dress up for Halloween this year. I literally don't wear make up at any other time unless it's a REALLY special occasion. Even then, I hate make up. But I'll do it for Halloween! I'll dress up to hand out candy to kids. Guess I'm just weird.

Or maybe I'm just really excited for Boo Bash at the elementary school.

What do you all plan to dress up as?

I also save a lot of my costumes from previous years. I've done a witch before, but this time I guess I'm more of a glamourous witch! XD

My favorite costume though is probably my Sonic costume.

And I have a ton of cat ears. XD Dressing up as a cat is kind of my go-to costume. Shouldn't surprise anyone here though.

MauEvig wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 10:21 am I'll dress up to hand out candy to kids. Guess I'm just weird.

How the Hell does that make you weird? My mother still does that and she's 68, and my wife and I both do it, and I know that Andy does as well, and so do a lot of other people, so if that makes you weird, what does that make us?

Your glamorous witch costume sounds great, I'm sure that you will have fun wearing it to hand out candy, and at the school party.

We used to rotate every year, one of us would go trick-or-treating with the kids, and the other would stay home and hand out candy, but in recent years it's become tradition that I go out with the kids and my wife hands out the candy.

My wife and I have been wearing famous couples costumes since we met, we usually wear 2 different costumes every year, one for the day time when we are at work, and the other at night. This year we are going as Woody and Jessie from Toy Story during the day, and as Duke and Scarlett from G.I. Joe at night. We have a strict policy that we can't ever wear the same costumes twice, so as you could imagine it's getting tough to come up with new costumes every year.

I know what you mean about the make up, my wife feels the same way that you do, and she only wears it for costumes and during the holidays. I have always preferred the natural look, but I will gladly admit that we have definitely had some fun in our costumes on Halloween night after the kids went to bed.

Lol

I probably won't decide how I'll costume until closer to the big day. I have several I rotate through--gray lady, witch, gypsy, Day of the Dead. I'll just see how the spirit moves me.

Mau, when I was younger, I loved playing the glamorous witch. Now I'm content to be the crone.

What's the gray lady costume?

It's a long silvery gown with bell sleeves. I've had it forever, bought it at a K Mart during Halloween season 20 or more years ago. I think of her as a ghost lady.

With the right make up, I guess she could also be a vampire. I've never gone there, but I did rediscover an old vampire costume my older son wore in high school. If I could persuade my husband, or my second son, to wear it, we could be a vampire family.

I love to do family costumes, but we only get to wear them when we do school and public events like comic shows, so far we have done a team of Ghostbusters, the Scooby Doo team, a group of super heroes, and Star Wars, where I was dressed as Darth Vader and my wife and the kids went as 3 different versions of Leia. On Halloween night my wife and I always dress the same, but the kids just wear the costumes that they want to.

We've never been coordinated enough to do the family costume thing. If we do it this year, it will be a first.

One year a family I knew did the Wizard of Oz theme.

The Wizard of Oz theme sounds great, and it's something that I would want to do personally, my wife would be fine with dressing as one of the male characters, or the Wicked Witch, or Glinda, but I know that the girls would argue over which would get to be Dorothy, because they always argue when they dress as Disney princesses.

When Sam picks a princess costume, Phoebe always wants to wear the same costume that Sam picked to wear, I guess you could say that she just wants to be like her big sister, but then Sam is annoyed by it, so she chooses another princess costume, and then Phoebe wants to be that princess too, and it just continues in a nonstop cycle of bickering until we convince them to both go as slightly different versions of the character, that is how they ended up as different versions of Leia.

At least with Leia she has many different looks from the movies, but Dorothy only has one basic look, so while they could both go as Dorothy, it would harder to get them to go as different versions of the character. Man, just thinking about it right now, I can already hear them arguing about it.

How the Hell does that make you weird? My mother still does that and she's 68, and my wife and I both do it, and I know that Andy does as well, and so do a lot of other people, so if that makes you weird, what does that make us?

That is a fair point. I should have known better when I'm in a forum full of fellow Halloween enthusiasts.

IRL people don't get as crazy about Halloween around my area. Although more and more people seem to be "creeping out" Halloween stuff, which is really cool, so maybe I'm not so weird after all.

I guess I'm a bit self conscious, my grandma used to vehemently voice her opinion against me dressing up or having ANYTHING to do with Halloween. But that wasn't her choice. Sure, I did live in her house at the time, but I don't feel like she had the right to tell me not to celebrate at all. THANKFULLY I don't live with her anymore. My boyfriend and I have a house and five cats. I can decorate and dress up however I want.

This same family though would probably have me give up all of my toys and hobbies. And yet...she collects baby dolls. So...yeah hypocrisy abounds.

No one does any harm by dressing up in a costume and handing out candy. But I'll never convince her, and so I just let her do her and I do me.

The family costumes sound cool. I can't imagine the kids fighting over the costumes though. Sounds like you can compromise.

I don't have to worry about my "kids" dressing up because I only have fur kids...and my cats only keep a costume on for less than a minute.

When we lived in Staunton, there was one street near Mary Baldwin that was extremely festive. The first time I ever saw the amazingly ornate Pumpkinmasters pumpkins, it was on that street (early 90s). You could probably go on Facebook and see which neighborhoods near you are gearing up. People with kids are going to the places that decorate big time. When I was little, you ToTed in your neighborhood, but now it's all about who decorates.

Re the antagonism towards Halloween on the part of fundamentalist Christians: it's amusing to me that the same people who condemn Halloween for its paganism are A-OK with Christmas trees and many attendant Christmas customs, like mistletoe and Yule logs, Santa and reindeer. Samhain was Christianized by the church with the invention of Hallowmas (Halloween/All Saints/All Souls) just as the pagan solstice festivals were Christianized by the designation of Christmas on Dec 25.

I have always maintained that most cultures have a masking holiday, and Halloween is ours. I think the prevalence of masking indicates that at some level, people need that release.

You are both right about hypocrites.

MauEvig wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:26 pm I guess I'm a bit self conscious, my grandma used to vehemently voice her opinion against me dressing up or having ANYTHING to do with Halloween.

Believe me, I know exactly what you mean, I think every family has someone that tries to force their ways on other family members. My father ruined almost every birthday, holiday, and vacation we had when we were kids. I know that it wasn't directly his fault because of the way that he was raised, but just because he was miserable, it doesn't mean that he had to make everyone else miserable. Thankfully, my mother eventually came to her senses and got rid of him, and after that we had some of the most fun and memorable moments in our lives.

I can decorate and dress up however I want.

Absolutely! As far as I'm concerned, as long as your collecting and hobbies makes you happy, and it's not harming anyone, then you should be able to do what you want, and it doesn't matter what other people think, just live your life and be happy.

As for your grandmother, I don't know how things are between the both of you now, but like you said, just let her live her own way, and wish her the best.

When I was living on my own before I met my wife, I always dressed up to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters. I looked forward to their costumes, and it was fun to watch them enjoy the holiday like I did growing up. I always gave out full sized candy bars for the best costumes, and we still do that to this day. I just love the look on their faces when I answered the door dressed as the Wolfman, Michael Myers, Spider-Man, or Darth Vader to give them candy.

About pet costumes, we only tried once to dress up our cat, and she wasn't fussy about it, she wore the costume and didn't complain, but she looked so weird that we felt bad for her and got rid of it.

Murfreesboro wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 8:38 pm When I was little, you ToTed in your neighborhood, but now it's all about who decorates.

You're absolutely right about that Murf, in my area trick-or-treating has been in decline for years, as every year less people give out candy, and less kids go trick-or-treating. But in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, that was the first year that I actually had to get in the car and drive the kids to another area to go trick-or-treating, as there wasn't any houses in our neighborhood, aside from ours, that was decorated or giving out candy, and I've had to drive them to other areas the last 2 years for trick-or-treating. I hope we won't have to do that this year, but if I have to then I will.

On Halloween night we are the only house on our street that is decorated now, there are others in the neighborhood, but not on our street. My wife told me that only about 50 trick-or-treaters showed up in 2020, and we got about 80 kids a year since then, but those numbers are way down from previous years, as we used to get a few hundred kids showing up every year until about 2017, after that there were a bunch of people in our neighborhood that just stopped decorating.

Back in 2009 we were living somewhere else, and the lowest amount of trick-or-treaters that ever showed up was 4 kids for the whole night, but that's because it was raining like crazy that night. Honestly, if we knew the last kid was going to be the last kid for the night, we would have gave him the whole bowl of candy. My wife, who I was still dating at the time, and I, had to eat that pile of candy by ourselves.

Neighborhoods do wax and wane with their celebrations. To some extent, it is a generational thing. Kids grow up and move out, and parents stop decorating so much. People get older and get tired. I'm seeing that happen on a nearby street. When my kids were ToTing, every house had a yard haunt. Sometimes the police had to come and direct traffic. It was a block party. But it was greatly diminished by the pandemic, and I see very few houses decorated all out this year the way they used to be. Some of the older people just got worn out with it and said enough. A few other places sold and new owners didn't get the memo. It's sad to see it decline, but I'm grateful it was at its peak when my kids needed it. I don't think it means Halloween is declining, though. I think it just means that some other neighborhood is on the rise.

Weather does affect turn-out, and the day of the week does, too. I'm not expecting a huge turn-out on a Tuesday night. I'm thinking it will be done by 8.

But there are lots of options for celebration throughout the month. Our Parks & Rec dept puts on two separate Halloween extravaganzas in two different parts of town.
One of them is scarier than the other and geared toward the hard-core horror fans. It's a walk through our replica of a frontier village, with actors depicting all sorts of terrifying entities. I enjoy it, but most of my family think it's too scary. The other is a carnival more for younger kids, with two separate haunted hayrides, a sweet woodland one for the itty bitties, and a moderately scary one for the older kids.

There are also a number of commercial haunts and corn mazes in the area. Lots of pumpkin patches for folks to visit. Several shopping areas where the stores give out candy. Numerous churches with fall festivals and Trunk or Treat. The Nashville Zoo does Boo in the Zoo. So there's plenty of Halloween fun around. You can't actually get to all if it.

I think you're right that it is generational, and hopefully soon it will pick up around here and Halloween can be fun in our neighborhood again. It's funny, yesterday I saw a house on my street actually put out decorations for the first time since the pandemic, so maybe some people are starting to celebrate again.

The haunts and other celebrations in our area will be open in a few days, so we will be bringing the kids to as many places as we can before Halloween.

How did the Littke Halloween party go?