Halloween Costume ideas and printable Halloween Stencils and Halloween Gifts

Halloween as a tradition began in as ancient festival Celtic Samhain and was used to describe the end of the harvest season and in fact it used to be a called as the Celtic New Year.

Now for the questions to when is Halloween celebrated it is celebrated on October 31st.

Literal meaning of Halloween

The tradition as started by ancient Gaels meant that the boundary between the dead and the living dissolved and hence the derivation of the name Halloween from the word All Hallows Even and it is the even of the All Hallows day .
Gaels used to light bonfires and throw the bones and the body of the slaughtered livestock into the bonfires. They used to wear Halloween costumes and masks to mimic the evil spirits they were trying to dispel.

Some Traditions associated with Halloween

Carved pumpkin with a candle lit inside is the most common symbol of Halloween and it is supposed to mean jack-o-lantern. It is believed that jack-o-lantern was started by initially by a mean farmer who tricked the devil in a cross in a tree and that devil then cursed jack to have the only light available to him which is the light in the turnip. But the turnip being so small the pumpkin which is mostly available in North America was used and now it is naturally associated with Halloween.


Halloween and trick or treat culture

The trick or treating culture started in early as poor used to go to the neighborly home on the Hallowmas which was on November 1 and ask for a treat. Now it is the children who use this festival as a fun thing and go from door to door asking for Trick or treating where by trick means that they will play a trick on the neighbor or his property a or they need a treat instead.

High Tech and halloween

With all the computers and everything and the cellphones the craze for decorating your computer with halloween backgrounds and screensavers is definitely on the rise.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween costumes were intended to be worn to dress like witches, ghosts and ghouls. Now Halloween costumes have been commercialized to such an extent that Halloween costumes have become a retail event for the shopkeepers and estimates are that about $4.6 billion were spent on Halloween costumes in 2006.

As far as Halloween parties and Halloween costumes go there is no other tradition that involves so much interests in children and adult alike. Halloween costume parties are any way the most favorite thing on the October 31st that most of the campuses around the US do.

Current popular figures as Hottest Halloween costumes Inspiration

The most popular choice for Halloween costumes is defined by the movies or the person most in news or even the some cultural icon and that said here are the top choices for men for Halloween costumes and these are

The Joker as the character that heath ledger was in the movie “The Dark Knight”
Christian Bales’ “Batman” is also the Halloween costume inspiration
Robert Downey Jr’s tow movies namely “Iron Man” and “Tropic Thunder”
Harrison Fords’ Indiana Jones is the also a Halloween costume inspiration for men.
All these themes are at best described as adult halloween costumes.

As far women choices for Halloween costume this season the top choice goes to

“ The House Bunny” played Anna Faris inspires a lot of Halloween costume and that followed by
In twilight portrayed by Kristen Stewart, Angelina Jolie as “Wanted”.
Of course talking about Hannah Montana I have described the Hannah Montana Cake ideas but there is Miley Cyrus inspiring a lot of Hannah Montana Halloween costumes.
Last but not the least is the Vanessa Hudgens as High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Than there are couple and group costumes ideas for Halloween which are represented as follows

The ladies in Sex and the City
Joker and Batman in the Dark Knight
The high schoolers in "Twilight";
The high schoolers in "High School Musical 3: Senior Year";
Iron Man/Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) & Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) in "Iron Man
Harold and Kumar (John Cho and Kal Penn) in "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay."

Homemade Halloween costumes

In this era of recession there is nothing better than trying out a homemade Halloween costume and that means that you need to master the art of craft to make a good Halloween costume yourself.

That said the first basic you need to get for a homemade costume is the idea for a costume and then you can go about collecting the material you will need or the costume.

These homemade costumes are a frugal way to do the Halloween party and also do the Halloween costumes for school. These will cost fractions of the cost as if you were to buy something from the marketplace.

As far as the ideas they can range from political to cult figures to period to classic themes and also for kids and infants there are some themes which may not be political but they will be for sure many costumes for the cutie kids.

Then there are Halloween costumes for teens the you need to be very sure what you are in for because it is the teens who have the most parties and are in campus and enjoy wearing costumes and have grand parties on the campus.

Halloween printables

As far as the Halloween printables and coloring pages there are a couple of sites that have all the information about various coloring paegs for kids like the vampires or the zombie or mad doctor or the favorite one for all the haunted house and the piano. These along with kids halloween costumes and joy of making halloween crafts definitely are what kid wait for the entire year.

Halloween capital of the world

There are two cities that have laid claim to be the Halloween capital of the world and those are
Anoka , Minnesota which has a large civic parade as well as other city wide events

Then there is another clam being made by another city for the Halloween capital and this is
Salem, Massachusetts which has the Halloween witch trials and also now is having some amazing display of lights and carve pumpkins.

In my next post I will be writing about halloween gifts and other halloween party ideas