Somehow Halloween costumes have become almost a competitive sport. As someone who doesn’t engage in cosplay, I totally blame cosplay. There’s no reasonable evidence for that opinion but luckily reasonable evidence isn’t really needed for opinions anymore. So I just blame most things on cosplay. Historic drought conditions in the West? Cosplay. Forgot to put an actual lunch in my daughter’s lunchbox? Cosplay. It’s just a fun word to say, really.
These days both kids and adults alike are creating elaborate Halloween costumes with lights, background music, and 14 different layers of makeup or they’re spending weeks coordinating themed costumes with the rest of their friend group. Workers spend days putting together elaborate costumes for workplace parties. I remember the life-sized Marshmallow Peep a former coworker made one year with just yellow spray paint, some chicken wire, and fiberglass foam. It was so realistic that a local candy store paid him to hang out at their store as a kind of mascot the following Easter. No one who saw it will ever forget it. He told us all later, after he was released from the hospital, that it was totally worth the weeks of meticulous effort and the likely irreversible lung damage it took to make it.
Halloween costumes were much easier when I was a teenager. Most years I would ask my mom for old bedsheets she was getting rid of, cut out two eyeholes, and voila! One classic ghost costume with minimal effort. The fabric wasn’t always ideal but, in the end, it got the job done.
Mom: [hands me old sheets]
Me: Do we have any without a floral pattern?
Mom: Just pretend you died from a Chrysanthemum allergy.
There weren’t any seasonal costume stores back then so if you wanted to be something fancy like a vampire or a princess or really anything that involved more than just discarded bedsheets you were going to need parental help. And by “parental help” I mean, of course, your mother.
Now, I have one of the all-time best moms. I also have two older brothers, though, so all her creativity and craftiness had been worn out of her well before I was trick-or-treating age. I never got an elaborate handmade costume made especially for me but my brother did.
Way back when she had that new mother energy, my mom had lovingly sewn together felt and fake fur to make a relatively lifelike raccoon costume for my oldest brother. Or maybe it was a bear. It was definitely some kind of woodland creature. It was hard to say exactly which one because my brother used that costume every year until he outgrew it, at which time it was handed down to my middle brother who, in turn, used it every year until he outgrew it too. By the time it was handed down to me it was a mess. It still resembled a furry animal but, thanks to the accumulated stains and loss of fur that happens to anything worn by or in the general vicinity of small boys, it appeared now to be a furry animal with an explosive bowel condition and a penchant for picking fights with weedwhackers.
Was it a good costume? No. But did I learn a valuable lesson about appreciating what I have instead of wanting what I don’t? Also no. I did, however, learn that despite wearing a pitiful costume I still got the same amount of candy as the friends I trick-or-treated with.
Homeowner to Friend #1: Oh, what a scary vampire! [Gives a handful of candy]
Homeowner to Friend #2: Whoa–it’s R2D2! [Gives a handful of candy]
Homeowner to Me: What a…great…diseased leopard you are. [Gives a handful of candy and closes door hastily]
I’m not saying you shouldn’t make whatever costume you want you want to make. If you want to spend all your free time in October making a costume everyone will remember for years to come, do it! If you want to start making cosplay-level costumes as a serious hobby and make all water West of the Rio Grande disappear, I mean…you be you.
But if you’re a kid and this Halloween the best you can manage is looking like a deranged forest mammal or a disembodied ghost with questionable taste in bedlinen, don’t worry about it. Halloween isn’t about the costume. It’s about the candy. And you’ll still take home enough candy that you’ll need parental help to finish it all. And by “parental help” I mean, of course, your father.
This first appeared in the October 2022 edition of The Hinesburg Record.
