It was the years before the fancy-schmanzy mass produced Jack Sparrow Wal-Mart costumes.
It was the years before every girl or woman was dressed as a slutty French maid or vamp.
It was the last years of those wax lips we always got as Halloween candy.
It was the 80's.
These honestly were the dying days of Halloween as it was intended, of kids going house to house collecting candies that were special and only found at Halloween: things like wax lips, and big lollipop rings, 'smoking' cigarettes (I say this with both nostalgia as well as incredulity), candy corn, real candied apples, little bags of kettle corn popcorn, Mary Janes, and those peanut butter things in the black and orange wrappers. It was an adventure to get home and look at the candy, unlike now, when all my kids get are one after the other of mini versions of ordinary, everyday candy bars. PHOOEY! Now what's so special about that??
The early 80's also signified the death of the homemade costume. Shortly there would be no more clowns or hobos or beauty queens. I actually go trick-or-treating with my kids and do not see a single home made costume aside from theirs (I am a purist still - oh, okay, I'm just a cheapo!).
What did this to Halloween? Part of it is that the first 'latchkey' generation of Gen X often didn't have moms around enough to have the time for costumes or real candy apples.
I contend, however, that the big event that seemed to change the nature of Halloween forever was the big Tylenol scare of 1982. After 7 people died from Tylenol laced with poison, what, moms across America asked, would prevent someone from doing the same to the Halloween candy?? This is just my stupid theory; if anyone has other explanations for the demise of the traditional Halloween, I'd love to hear it.
Nowadays, kids barely trick-or-treat at all. Instead, they go to organized functions at schools or churches. They go on hayrides or to organized parties. They go to 'trunk-or-treat' and get candies served out of the back of people's cars, so as not to do something HUGELY RISKY and intimate like ring a doorbell (I still like to go to the door with the kids, its fun to peek into people's foyers, hee-hee!).
They do everything BUT wreak havoc, get very bad tummyaches, and have one night to be able to face their greatest fears. This is a characteristic of modern America that I hate, the coddling of kids so extremely that they don't even have a chance to become brave by facing the demons inside (and, on this night, outside).
Now, to get to my point. What got me started on this is that a lovely reader named Cora was so kind as to send me the awesome photos you see above. The Ms. Pac Man outfit and the Smurfs costume just made me grin so big when I opened them in my email! They are awesome examples of what we don't see anymore at Halloween and are so reminiscent of the 1980's. Cora, by the way, has her own blog that you may enjoy: http://lovelettersbycora.blogspot.com
I wasn't actually trick-or-treating past 1982 or so. I guess you could say I had the pleasure to experience the the dying days of old fashioned Halloween in its last gasps before moving on to teenage pursuits. I don't believe I have any photos of my costumes back then, but I do invite you all to email me any photos you have of yourself in 80's inspired Halloween costumes (or, heck, in any handmade 'old style' costumes) and I promise to showcase them in my blog as I have done with Cora's. Send them anytime between now and Halloween to 4happycampers@bellsouth.net.
18 comments:
I do think, parents get nervous having their kids trick and treat, that is why they go to special places. We get the children that know us..and some of the costumes are adorable.
I think Halloween died not so much in the 80's...but in the late 90's/early 2000's. (I was born in 1984 so obviously I have nothing to compare to!)...My costumes as a kid were always pieced together from odd things found at yardsales because we couldn't really afford a new costume every year. Now that I'm the one answering the door on Halloween...well...answering the door hardly happens, and we live on a very busy street! Buying candy seems like such a huge waste of money...when I was a kid, we used to make a big affair out of making goody bags with 3 different fun-size bars and a toy (everyone knew to stop at my house because we gave them the hookup!). The first year after we moved into a new neighborhood, we bought 10 bags of candy and mixed them in a bowl...but something was terribly wrong when we ended up eating most of that ourselves...or I did. lol
Last year a girl showed up with her pet pony. She was the only trick or treater we had :(
megan, she showed up with a pony???
I hear what you're saying, but maybe you just need to be a bit older to understand what I'm saying. Way back when, the 'fun size' candy would have been considered stupid and boring. We had cool stuff, gory stuff, and most important, it was 'special' and only found at halloween, much as candycanes are only found at christmas.
I think its part of the whole effort at making kids not feel scared, and not be subjected to imagery like witches, vampires, or anything else. Many parties do not even ALLOW costumes that have anything to do with horror or violence of any kind. This is so strange to me, considering the holiday's INTENTION is to allow kids one night at facing their greatest fears, and, thus, growing up just a tiny bit more that night.
We try to sanitize the experience of growing up now in ways that no one did when I was a kid. It kinda goes hand in hand with how sports have been degraded away from the virtues of competition for kids and towards a 'feel-good' stance of self-esteem building.
But with both competition and with fear - we all know as adults that the world just does not work that way - the world, as a whole, is not sanitized and is not about feeling good, its about survival of the fittest.
And, again, it is a disservice to deny kids this reality.
Yes, she showed up with a live pony! It was so cool and well behaved :).
I didn't even realize kids evens are taking the gory out of Halloween! Yet they let kids dress up like floozy Bratz :(.
My husband grew up in the Middle East and has never experienced Halloween. I can't wait to take him to a good old haunted house or a haunted hayride or something. There was one when I was a kid that scared me to death because it had like...disemboweled plastic people that looked a bit realistic to an 8 year old. And some guy who worked there scared me when he jumped out from behind a tree and I started crying LOL. He took his mask off and gave me a hug and apologized. It's something that I'll never forget but it's not like it scarred me for life and is not one of the top 10 reasons I should see a therapist. haha
Kids are too sheltered these days. Granted, when I went out trick or treating my mom was always with me...but that's moreso because the houses were so far apart and we lived in the sticks that we wouldn't get any candy if we didn't drive from house to house.
megan, that scary stuff was all over when I was a kid. Half the houses on my block had stuff on the porch like a bucket of brains, or eyeballs you had to stick your hands into (it was just peeled grapes floating in water, but it sure felt like eyeballs!!). I guess my point is that our society wants kids to 'grow up' in the wrong way, by sexualizing them with slutty costumes - instead of in the 'right way', by helping them to experience fear and learnt hat they have the power to overcome it.
By the way, you need to do halloween really good for your hubby ;-)
I know exactly what you mean! My siblings and I were so creative with our costumes, but now it's all plastic masks and printed suits. Ugh. I miss REAL Halloween costumes!
yeah, katie, its so BORING!
I'm dressing up my kids as Mario and Princess Peach. We're just using stuff from home.
The molly coddling thing is so lame. I used to do some really dangerous stuff when I was a kid. Like jousting on bicycles, climbing on roofs, things like that. You can't keep kids down, no matter how hard you try.
atom, I would SO LOVE to see photos of the costumes once you make them.
Oh, I feel totally famous now! Woo hoo! I can't wait to show this post to my daughter when she gets out of school! She'll be whooping and jumping around the room, I promise you. (We get excited easily). :-)
I should probably show my Mom too. Can't leave her out, since she was sweet enough to devote her entire summer every year to figuring out how to manifest our crazy costume ideas. Thanks Mom!
But anyway, you are ABSOLUTELY right about the Tylenol scare ruining Halloween. I remember that vividly. Once that happened, my Mom suddenly had all these Trick-or-Treating rules: only visit houses of people you know, don't take candy from anyone wearing gloves, and she would inspect each and every piece looking for pin holes and whatnot before we could eat any of it. I always thought that was overkill -- we were only visiting people we knew well, so why would the candy need to be inspected?! Did she think the next door neighbors had an axe to grind with us? I mean, we weren't the most civilized kids on the street, but still....
Thank you for using my pictures in your blog. This is fun!! Can I add one correction though? The blog I'm guilty of unleashing on the world is actually lovelettersbycora.blogspot.com (but the other one is AWESOME too!!) :-)
Can't wait to see other peoples 80's Halloween Costume photos -- I bet there are some spectacular ones out there!
oh my goodness, cora, OF COURSE that is your website! I accidentally put the website of wblmom's blog in this blog - it must have gotten stuck in my clipboard! Yikes!
So sorry - i am going to correct that now!
by the way, Cora, there's nothing wrong with feeling all famous. The first few times people blogged about my jewelry I got so excited I printed copies to keep in my 'brag' file. haha!
I loved this post and so totally agree. I miss Halloween nite and all the trick or treaters. And I always made my kids costumes and I always had home made costumes when I was little but we kids made our own. I went as a hobo with a big fat fannie and always got lots of laughs. Oh and we went into strange neighborhoods too.
No biggie! :-)
This is interesting. Trick or treating is hugely popular in my Oklahoma City neighborhood.
I think it died in the 90's. I grew up in the 80's too and I never had a store bought costume. I would dream something up and my mom would help me put something together from things we had in the house, only a few things would be purchased. My fav costume was being a greek goddess! My mom tied a white sheet around me with a gold belt (it looked good) and she braided my hair in tiny braids and made a sweet green wreath for my hair. I got to wear a little make up and believe me I felt like a goddess :).
I also feel that we shelter the kids a bit too much with the scary stuff. I am not into media exploitation,but I am all for a good scary house. We go all out with the gore when decorating our house and guess what the kids love it!
Thanks for bringing me back ... :)
justyn, thanks for your comments ;-)
I will rememeber the goddess costume for my daughter when we are hard up for a costume!
I hope you visit again!
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