Happy Halloween friends! I hope you all had a safe and fun one.
So, I have a question to ask you....when exactly did Halloween become an adult holiday? My memories of Halloween growing up in the mid-1970s are very different than the Halloween of today. Back then, only kids wore homemade or store-bought costumes of clowns, witches, ghosts, skeletons, and other assorted fun spooky characters. After wearing our costumes to school all day, we would wait until dusk and walk up and down the streets of our neighborhood (with parents or an adult in tow), carrying our Halloween candy bags or plastic pumpkins, ringing every house doorbell on the block, asking neighbors for candy and treats to take home to overindulge ourselves with later at home.
BTW - that's me wearing a homemade vampire costume when I was a kid and me last year wearing a sexy Roman soldier costume in the photo above. How times have changed. LOL
Anyway, back then there were no Halloween parades or adult house parties where grown-ups would wear sexy nurse, sexy astronaut, or sexy police officer costumes, get drunk on tons of alcohol, and take selfies of themselves all night long. My parents never wore a Halloween costume, ever! So this made me wonder when exactly this wholesome “kids-only” holiday became the modern-day bacchanalia that it is today.
When I asked some of my friends if they had any idea when Halloween became an adult holiday none of them seemed to know or have a good answer to the question. So out of curiosity, I decided to do some research online to answer the question. Here’s what I found…
When I looked up the history of Halloween online Wikipedia said, “Halloween costumes were traditionally modeled after figures such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, scary-looking witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses. Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century. A Scottish term, the tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children. Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1950s, it had become a night for children.”
But then there was a big gap until the 1970s when, Wikipedia continues, “the yearly New York's Village Halloween Parade was begun in 1974; it is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience.” A-ha!!! Now we’re getting somewhere. BTW - the West Halloween Halloween Carnival is also one of the largest Halloween street parties in the world. As is the one in the Castro in San Francisco.
Anyway…I digress. So then I googled “when did Halloween become an adult holiday” and I found this on the CNN website, “The shift from children's to adult holiday can be traced to the 1970s, when Halloween street festivals in several gay neighborhoods in the U.S. began to transform into adult parties featuring lavish and over-the-top costumes.” An article on the Big Think website expanded on that thought by stating “gays and lesbians carved out Halloween as a space where their differences could be celebrated not stigmatized.”
Writer Yearn Kim from Popsugar states, “Risqué costumes…came into the picture…amid the gay-liberation and……simultaneously, the second-wave feminism movement made way for a sexual revolution that redefined women's sexuality, which was often expressed through their fashion and beauty choices. While Halloween had previously been primarily for kids, the end of these decades marked the beginning of adults co-opting the holiday.”
So the answer to the question is my people - the gay community - are responsible for the Halloween we know today! This makes total sense since Halloween is seen as the Gay High Holiday to end all other holidays. So if you attended any sort of Halloween celebration this year (wearing your skimpiest sexy costume of course) you should thank all of us in the LGBTQ+ community for bringing all this fun night of freedom to express your inner desires into your life every October 31st. You’re welcome. :)
Listen to my spellbinding conversation with “Dark Shadows” star Kathryn Leigh Scott by clicking on the links below. Enjoy!
Episode 37 - HERE
Episode 38 - HERE
