Wearing A Kilt On Halloween

[Pleater]

This is an interesting thread - has anyone got any theories on how the custom of dressing up on Halloween arose, and from what cultural background?

Anne the Pleater

[Baeau]

This is an interesting thread - has anyone got any theories on how the custom of dressing up on Halloween arose, and from what cultural background?

Anne the Pleater

Ask & ye shall receive........whether true, or not, is a different story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

[Pleater]

Baking soul cakes, carving a turnip and making treacle toffee - though that was a week later - as was mischief night, were part of my childhood in Yorkshire, in the north of England - but people did not dress up.

A few families had parties and games, not mine - there was an element of envy of the children who got to do such things as apple bobbing.

Anne the Pleater

[BEDickey1337]

I can't speak for others, but I believe you should respect the kilt by wearing it well, not haphazardly. My go to is "Venetian Masquerade". I dress in my black tie equivalent, complete with double albert chain, cane, and white gloves. To that I add a proper mask, specifically this one;



It tends to get me just the right kind of attention.

I am wearing a kilt, but I am also "respecting" it(imho), because I look damn good when I step out the door.

[Dollander]

I can't speak for others, but I believe you should respect the kilt by wearing it well, not haphazardly. My go to is "Venetian Masquerade". I dress in my black tie equivalent, complete with double albert chain, cane, and white gloves. To that I add a proper mask, specifically this one;



It tends to get me just the right kind of attention.

I am wearing a kilt, but I am also "respecting" it(imho), because I look damn good when I step out the door.

So if such a thing would typically involve a tuxedo, but the kilt outfit is your go-to formalwear, then that makes perfect sense and I wouldn't consider it disrespectful at all.

I spent my teens and early twenties celebrating Samhain rather than Halloween, and I only got back into into the whole costume-wearing thing for a few years following my "antipiphany". So I'll be kilted on Halloween simply because I've been kilted every day for the past 2+ years. If anything, putting on jeans would be the costume. Maybe I could go all out and wear jeans a size too small with the knees ripped out, add a flannel shirt, a long wig, and dye my beard, and just say I'm my teenage self.

Meanwhile, I'm already braced for the "who are you supposed to be?" questions from those who don't see me in a kilt on a regular basis. Already one person at a local convenience store looked at me and said "Braveheart?". I have seen a few people out and about in costume, since probably most Halloween parties were this weekend, so he can be forgiven for thinking I was among them. But I was wearing a modern kilt and hose with black work boots, a flat cap, and a sweater, so that'd have to be the laziest Braveheart costume ever.

[OC Richard]

This is an interesting thread - has anyone got any theories on how the custom of dressing up on Halloween arose, and from what cultural background?

The Wiki article says most of what I was going to say.

Here in the US Southwest "Anglo" (for a lack of a better term) culture is in intimate contact with Spanish culture, and I was told by a Mexican-American about old traditions in Mexico: Halloween night is when your dead ancestors walk about, and naturally they will visit you. You have to be hospitable to them, so you leave out food for them on the table in the main room of your house, and you leave your front door ajar. But these ancestors are terrifying-looking so you lock yourself in your bedroom. According to him this evolved into people dressing up as the dead and going door to door for food.

For sure here in Southern California trick-or-treating appears to be most popular in the Mexican-American community, least popular in the Asian-American communities.

As an "Anglo" all I can say is that in the 1960s when I was a kid Halloween night was fantastic! All the kids running around in the dark, unsupervised by adults, and getting free candy and apples and such.

About the "trick" part of "trick or treat" yes if people turned off their lights and pretended not to be home their house would get some sort of treatment. We would smear shaving cream on their windows, wrap toilet paper around their trees or car, or combine the two for a real mess. I never egged a house but it was done.

My dad told me that Halloween in the 1930s was different, with the tricks more elaborate, such as putting somebody's wagon up on the roof of their barn. When I was in High School (1970s) something like that was done, with a Volkswagen Bug somehow put in a fountain in front of the school.