As we all know based on the pop-up Halloween stores showing up on every block, Halloween is almost upon us! For many of us, that means trips to said stores to buy costumes and decorations, buying themed individually wrapped candy, and maybe even making some themed drinks for the adults. The kids in your life will get chaperoned around the neighborhood to the sound of the age-old “trick-or-treat” until they fill their candy buckets. And while some of these traditions are held over, Halloween looked a little different back in the day. In the latter decades of the 20th century, Halloween was filled with homemade costumes, pranks, urban legends, and of course fall favorites like bobbing for apples! We’re taking a look back to see if Halloween really was more of a treat back when we were kids, or if our nostalgia is tricking us!

Costumes are one of the most integral parts of Halloween. They’re what sets the day apart from every other day, allowing us to become someone else for a little while. In today’s world, dressing up is easy - just pop over to Spirit Halloween and they’ll have everything you need. But back in the day, many of our costumes were home made. This meant going to a fabric store, such as Jo-ann’s, picking out a pattern, buying the fabric, and standing super still as our mom’s pinned our costumes together. For others, it meant scrounging up whatever we could find in the house, to put together our own costumes. Ghosts were always an easy classic. Or maybe, for many of our trick-or-treating outings, we wore hand-me-downs from older siblings. 

And, of course, no costume was complete without something to carry your candy back in. Pillow cases were, of course, classics for the most ambitious of kids, and they likely always will be. McDonald’s plastic pumpkins were also another great choice. Did you know they are actually bringing those back? Regardless of the process or the materials used, there was always a story behind its creation, making our costumes feel just a little more personal. 

Another big part of Halloween night was the urban legends. In the 70s/80s, parents felt safe enough to let their children run around the neighborhood any day of the year, and Halloween was hardly an exception. However, with the rise of some urban legends, these feelings began to change. We became ever watchful for drugs in our candy, razors in our apples, or temporary tattoos that would take us on an acid trip. After all those things were checked and deemed safe, there was still the threat of having a black cat cross your path or having someone yelling “Bloody Mary” (or “Candyman”, or “Beetlejuice”) three times and conjuring an evil spirit. Plus, there was always that one creepy house in the neighborhood where we felt sure was being used by the Headless Horseman or a coven of witches on Halloween night only. While people are still people, and families today may still check candy for danger that we never found evidence of, the overall creepiness of Halloween doesn’t feel quite the same in a world with technology. The threat of ghosts and witches isn’t as intense when you have the internet to prove to yourself they aren’t real.

Another thing we (but mostly our parents) used to live in constant fear of was Halloween pranks. Or maybe you didn’t fear getting your house egged, toilet-papered or flaming-bag-of-poo’d because you were the prankster. But again, the rise in technology has mostly caused this practice to be a thing of the past. No one wants to get caught via Ring camera igniting a paper grocery bag full of their own feces. Plus, what fun is it to prank a house when it might mess up the extreme yard decorations everyone seems to have now, right? Not everything was mischievous, though. There were other fun Halloween activities like bobbing for apples, hay rides or pumpkin carving that brought the neighborhood together.

Overall, Halloween used to feel like a bigger deal. Or at least, it was way more involved on every level. The costumes took longer, the safe candy checks became just as big of a ritual as parent-limited pre-bedtime consumption, and the whole neighborhood came out to celebrate and protect their property from tricksters. But today, we have some fun new traditions like watching movies projected on the neighbors’ garage door or drinking themed adult beverages. Halloween might still be a treat, but no one can trick us into thinking it’s better now than it was when we were kids!