Halloween Costumes often reflect the actual meaning of the festive occasion and they come no more better suited than good old, cliched witches fancy dress costumes! I know, its pretty commercial and really little to do with witches or All Hallows Eve itself, but I’m just going with the flow here!
So why do we love to dress up as witches and wizards at this time of year? A lot of it comes from the media who have a way of blowing anything out of all proportion to suit themselves, but there of course is some factuality in the connection of witches and October 31. That’s because it is the Sabbat of Samhain, or the third and final harvest marking the final days of summer and one of the four most important dates on the Wiccan calendar. It is no coincidence that Samhain almost exactly coincides with the Hispanic tradition of the Day of the Dead on November 1 as it is also known in pagan and Wiccan beliefs as the Feast of the Dead.
No wonder kids like to dress up in scary outfits, often mimicking entities associated with death, such as ghosts, zombies, vampires, imps and other unsavory characters! They all stem from this original belief that pre-dates Christianity by thousands of years and was a wide-spread religion in its own right.
So dressing up as witches or crones has been a traditional way for kids to go around the neighborhood scaring the life out of their neighbors whilst scavenging for sweets, candies and other “treats” or having a “trick” played on them by receiving a rock instead! Nowadays, that practice will often have the giver receiving a trick of their own from a disgruntled kid, often involving rotten eggs or paint, so it pays to be kind to the little darlings and keep their dentists happy by giving them plenty of sweets!
As for the actual costumes, there was a time when they’d be hand made by the kids’ mothers and they’d be worn with pride and great care taken to ensure they didn’t get dirty of torn as their parents most likely would not have had the money to buy them.
These days, parents simply get out their credit cards and give the kids whatever they want. That means the latest must-have costumes usually matching a character from a blockbuster movie or some media exploded monstrosity that all the kids simply have to be wearing for Trick or Treat!
So are witches costumes still as popular? You bet they are and adults love to wear them to fancy dress parties as much now as they ever did, so if you haven’t gotten yours already, you’d better start looking around for a cool costume as soon as possible so as not to be disappointed when the stores all sell out!
