This Is How Americans Celebrated Halloween In The Early 20th Century

 While it's always been a little scary and a lot of fun, Halloween doesn't always look like it seems now. Carving and carving pumpkins has always been a part of American tradition, but it's only recently that elaborate costumes, organized trick-or-treating, and haunted mazes have become a thing. There are many different traditions of Halloween making in the early 20th century, many of which began regionally, but have since spread to the rest of the country. Some of them have been changed only slightly, while others have completely disappeared. Let's get scary.

Most people made their Halloween costumes by hand

Today, you can simply go to your local costume shop or Halloween store and buy any costume your heart desires, whether it's a sexy gremlin or a masked slasher. By the late 1940s, however, the picking was certainly slim. Except for the fact that Halloween was still somewhere between Mardi Gras and Arbor Day on the list of important holidays, Pete's was a war for the sake of it. They couldn't waste valuable stuff making you look like a dumb ghost. Instead of buying a Halloween costume, trick-or-treaters had to make their own costumes out of whatever was easy, whether it was papier-mâché or muslin. Some of the earliest mass-produced apparel was AS. Made by companies like Fishback and Ben Cooper.

Paper Halloween decorations popularized in the 1920s

Today, families combine their love of decorating with their neighbors' disgust by arranging mutilated dummies, foam spiders and all manner of other terrors in their front yards. The race to create widespread nightmares began in the 1920s with the release of a line of party goods by the Pennsylvania-based Beastle Company.

As Halloween parties moved into the house, paper cats, cauldrons and witches of the Beastle became an annual tradition that let housewives decorate their homes with spooky, card-stock creations. The opening decorations would still be an attractive addition to any Halloween party.

Try to catch the apple

A Halloween tradition that has faded from many modern celebrations is apple-jumping, a simple game in which guests dip their heads into a pool of floating apples in water and a piece of fruit with their teeth. try to grab. In some versions of the game, party-goers have their hands tied behind their backs before they bite into an apple tied with a string.

Bobbing for apples didn't start out as a Halloween tradition. It was actually part of the dating process in Europe hundreds of years ago. The practice eventually ended everywhere except in Ireland, where it became a part of Celtic Fall traditions. When the Irish and Scottish immigrated to America in the early 20th century, they brought the tradition (along with many others) with them. Unfortunately, this practice has disappeared from modern Halloween celebrations.

Pumpkin Parade Stick

If you've started trick-or-treating ever since the 1950s, you've likely never heard of the Pumpkin Parade Stick. In the early 20th century, Halloween parades were incredibly popular, taking place everywhere from small towns to large towns. To help brighten the night as well as draw attention to the fact that there was a little trick-or-treater going on around, place a candle on these sticks with jack-o'-lantern baubles on top. While the user knocked on doors in search of candy or walked the streets in a dark parade.