Who Can Forget the Costumes?

My The Domestic Witch's 2010 Halloween Blog Party entry for today is all about costumes.  Fun, silly, scary, serious or sexy, what would Halloween be without them?
         
Trick-or-treating, masquerade balls, costume parties, and costume contests--little princesses, goblins, pirates, cheerleaders, vampires, ninjas, and cowboys wandering up and down our streets, treat bags in hand, in the earlier hours of that special night.  Or their more sophisticated and sometimes sexier adult aspects which we see at parties, bars, and clubs throughout the week or so preceding the big night.  All of them are part of the magic.

I don't remember all of the costumes I've worn throughout the years, but a few of them stand out.  DH and I dressing as vampires and handing out sangria to parents out with their trick-or-treaters.  Going as the Christian devil while my DH went as the Christian god on Austin's famous (infamous) 6th Street.  Going as a ghost in a top-hat.  (It was the only way to keep the sheet from sliding.) 

There are others' costumes I remember, also.  The year a housemate went as a fairly elaborate Cleopatra.  My DH's boss' boss, who was about 6'2", dressed as Darth Vader, mask and all.  The little girl who came to the door as the Pink Power Ranger.

What was your most memorable costume?

K is for Kitties 

(ABC Wednesday)

Black ones, that is.  A black cat, especially the arched-back silhouette variety, is one of the most easily recognized symbols of Halloween, which is my topic today for The Domestic Witch's 2010 Halloween Blog Party.

We all know the symbols of Halloween, if not the reasons behind them.  They definitely call up the season, and sometimes even give us a chill.  I'll talk about Halloween history later in the week, but for now let's just discuss the symbols themselves.

Black cats, witches' hats, and flying bats, to start.  Witches themselves, especially the ones flying broomsticks across a full moon. That same full moon behind a bare, gnarled tree.  Tombstones, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns and the pumpkins from which they are now carved.  Cauldrons, skeletons, and anything black and orange.  Severed limbs and scarecrows, cobwebs and dripping candlesticks.

The modern secular holiday is all about scaring ourselves, and these symbols all, at one time or another, did just that.  Today, I fear we're moving away from the classics towards signs that are more gross than eerie--bugs and slimy eyeballs and the like.

What images give you a bit of a fright? 

On the 1st Day of Halloween. . .

This post, late as it may be, is my first one for The Domestic Witch's 2010 Halloween Blog Party.  I'm going to attempt to post every weekday in October about Halloween/Samhain--the mundane, the magickal, and even the magical.  :)

Starting out, I thought I'd talk about the Halloween parties of my past.  This includes everything from the first one I threw to the biggest one I've ever thrown. 

The first one was at my mom's house when I was 13.  It was quite possibly the first Halloween party I ever attended.  (Nobody in the small Texas town where I grew up was as into Halloween as I was.)  It was certainly the first costume party to which I'd ever gone.  I still have some of those decorations, although they're more like mementos now, much too fragile to actually be used.

I continued to throw, and go to, Halloween parties all through my high school, university, and young adult days.  One memorable year I attended four different parties on October 31st.  The guests changed, as did the size of the guest list and the themes, but they all celebrated my favorite, favorite, favorite holiday. 

Then I met my DH, and to my delight he loves Halloween as much as I do.  We began throwing one every year.  We started small, with less than a dozen guests, in Cedar Park, Texas.  At our last one, in Vancouver, BC, we invited close to 200 people.  (I hope those of you who were there remember it as well as I do.)  By this time, we had more Halloween decorations than we'd ever need--and still do.  We've not gotten rid of any of them.

We were forced to move, to California, and were so unhappy the two Halloweens we were there we didn't even THINK about throwing a party.  (Although we did spend one Oct 31 in Death Valley, in costume.)  And for each of the five Octobers we've been in Ontario (2010 makes six), something or other has gotten in the way of having one.  We did seriously consider having a party this year, but life once again interfered, this time in the form of financial and health problems.

But there's always hope for next year.