Scary costumes not sweet ones for Halloween

Scary costumes not sweet and cute ones – this is Halloween to me. I make a big distinction between a Halloween party and a Masquerade Ball.

Relatively new introduced, in the 15th century, the Masquerade balls were a feature of the french Carnival season. Wearing a costume for public festivities started in Italy, particularly in Venice where the upper classes worn elaborated gowns with masks and participated in elaborated dance evenings. The masks were picturing kings and queens, members of the royal court, priests and buffoons and opulence was the main theme.

Halloween is a combined holiday, that started with the Samhain Festivities held by Celts over 2000 years ago. They believed the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred on that night and the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth. After they were conquered by the Roman empire the holiday mixed up with Feralia -that commemorated the passing of the dead. With the growing of Christianity The All Saints Day celebration became mandatory over the Roman empire territory. Celebrated on the 1st of November it was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

The tradition of dressing in a costume for Halloween has European and Celtic roots. Being afraid of the dark and believing that spirits are among them on that special night people would wear masks if they left home so the ghosts would not see them as humans and mistakes them for spirits. To keep the house safe, people would place food outside the door to please the malefic souls.

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