Halloween costume
From at least the 16th century,[6] the festival included mumming and guising,[7] which involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food.
[9] F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient pagan festival included people wearing masks or costumes to represent the spirits, and that faces were marked (or blackened) with ashes taken from the sacred bonfire.
[6] In parts of southern Ireland, a man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses—some of which had pagan overtones—in exchange for food.
[15][16][17][18] One 19th-century English writer said it "used to consist of parties of children, dressed up in fantastic costume, who went round to the farmhouses and cottages, singing a song, and begging for cakes (spoken of as "Soal-cakes"), apples, money, or anything that the good wives would give them".
[21][22] Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh wrote on the wearing of costumes: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world.
[26] Many Christians in continental Europe, especially in France, believed that on Halloween, "the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival," known as the danse macabre, which has often been depicted in church decoration.
[27] An article published by Christianity Today claimed the danse macabre was enacted at village pageants and court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society" and suggested this was the origin of Halloween costume parties.
But in the 1930s, A.S. Fishbach, Ben Cooper, Inc., and other firms began mass-producing Halloween costumes for sale in stores as trick-or-treating became popular in North America.
Another popular trend is for women (and, in some cases, men) to use Halloween as an opportunity to wear costumes that reveal more skin than might be socially acceptable otherwise.
[35] Researchers surveyed for the National Retail Federation in the United States and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up $10 from the year before).
[42] Halloween costumes in the contemporary Western world sometimes depict people and things from present times and are sometimes read in terms of their political and cultural significance.
[43][44][45] Immigration and Customs Enforcement Secretary Julie Myers was involved in a scandal when she awarded "Best Costume" at the ICE Halloween party to an 'escaped Jamaican prisoner' dressed in dreadlocks and blackface.
While costumes of various occupations like student, police officer, academia, clergy, or nursing do exist for men, they are often at least relatively accurate to the clothing a man employed in any of the fields would wear.
