First Halloween Costumes: Skins, Skulls, and Skirts

[icymist]

James Owen in London
for National Geographic News

Updated October 29, 2009
A far cry from the Twilight vampires, naughty nurses, and Spider-Men of 2009, the first Halloween costumes included animal skins and heads, drag getups, and even mechanical horse heads, historians say.

Records of the precursor to Halloween—the Celtic new year celebration of Samhain (SAH-win)—are extremely threadbare, said Ken Nilsen, professor of Celtic studies at Canada's St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

"We don't have actual records telling us what it was like in ancient times, so our knowledge is based principally on folk customs that continued until recent centuries," Nilsen told National Geographic News in 2008.

Samhain, however, is known to date back at least 2,000 years, based on analysis of a Celtic bronze calendar discovered in the 1890s in Coligny, France, in what was then called Gaul.
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