Tegan Louise is a 20-something American female juggling college, work, and life as a starving artist.
Keep the Spirit of Halloween Alive at Your Party with Halloween Cards
Halloween affords everyone an opportunity to dress like someone else and indulge in the creepy. Adults as well as children want to get together with friends and celebrate the spookiest day of the year. So, with that in mind, they often plan Halloween parties. With Halloween cards, you can let everyone know the details of your party ahead of time so they know what to wear and when to come.
Halloween stems from an old Celtic holiday called Samhain, which was celebrated from sunset to sunrise to mark the shortening of the days and the end of the harvest. It was believed that on this day the barrier between our world and the otherworld thinned in certain places, leaving portals open for a short time through which the Tuatha de Danann (old Celtic gods) and the spirits of the dead could travel.
The holiday has since evolved into the celebration that we know today as Halloween.
Nowadays, Halloween is looked forward to by most people as an excuse to have a party, put pumpkin in everything, and try to scare each other silly with freakish costumes. Some people truly revel in the horror movies and love to wear a bloody mask and creep around without letting anyone know who they are. Regardless of how you celebrate, though, you’ll need to include some important information on your Halloween cards.
You will have to include the date on your Halloween cards since you may be celebrating on a convenient Saturday instead of the day of the actual holiday. Also, you will want to make sure that your guests know if there is a theme or a contest. A costume competition is a good way to encourage your guests to actually dress up, instead of just showing up for the food.
If you are having a Disney or a Tim Burton theme for your Halloween party, you’ll want your guests to know so that they can pick a good costume.
Halloween is a tradition of spookiness that stretches back thousands of years and the modern version keeps the creepy going. Halloween cards let everyone know about your event so that you can celebrate the holiday in style.
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Remember when you were a child, and for Halloween you would dress up in costumes like a cheerleader, a witch, or a cat? Well, as you got older, you were still able to dress up as those characters, just with less fabric and more push-up bras.
Celebrating Halloween in the 21st century for a woman means that it is the one night of the year you can walk through the streets in skimpy lingerie and as long as you have animal ears or a nurse’s hat on, you can say it’s just a Halloween costume.
For women, Halloween costume options are seemingly endless. Halloween costume sites feature well over 700 different costume choices, all of which scarcely cover a person’s body. Police costumes, nurse, bumblebee, sailor, school girl, and many more are options available on nearly every Halloween costume website in every size.
Why is it that on one day of the year, women find it more socially acceptable to bare their skin in a way they would regularly label badly?
In reality, many women aren’t comfortable enough with their bodies to sport risqué clothing on a regular basis. Because of the ease in which society labels women “sluts” or “skanks”, now more than ever, females are tip-toeing around what they do, say, and where in order to avoid the harsh stereotype.
However, on Halloween night it’s become customary, almost expected, that women run around bars and parties, scantily clad in costumes that vaguely resemble animals or figures of authority. In the movie “Mean Girls”, Lindsay Lohan’s character Cady is unaware of the “sexy Halloween costume” rule, and shows up to a party dressed in a full Zombie Bride costume, complete with ugly fake teeth and a dress that covered most of her body. She was predictably out of place.
It’s most likely that the trend of sexy Halloween costumes evolved from teenagers and young adults still wanting to celebrate Halloween, but in a more adult way. With the prominence of events such as lingerie themed parties and wet t-shirt contests, it seemed only fitting that Halloween be turned into a holiday to celebrate the near-naked female body.
It can feel empowering for a woman to wear a skimpy French Maid costume and be able to parade around confidently in it. On Halloween, women aren’t judged on the clothes (or lack of) that they wear, and are instead applauded for accentuating their body confidently.
Halloween also allows some women to indulge in their fantasies of role-play or dressing sexy without fear of seeming strange or awkward.
Places like Yandy Costumes offer hundreds of different Halloween costume options for women, most of which seem less sexist than they do sexy. In general, sexy Halloween costumes have become more liberating for women rather than sexist or chauvinistic. It’s possible that the trend of baring skin on holidays will help invigorate women to become more comfortable in their own bodies daily.
The most terrifying day of the year is approaching bringing along a tradition that comprises ancient beliefs that nowadays are mixed with the fun of the tricks and treats that characterize this day. Globalization has incorporated to Halloween other traditions as well, such as those coming from All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead that are celebrated during November 1st and 2nd in several countries outside de USA.
However, nobody can resist the mixed emotions that come with Halloween no matter if adults and children believe or not in witches, ghosts, vampires, mommies and other monsters and creatures coming from the grave. The Halloween night is time for children to have fun, but because there is a child inside the heart of all of us, do not miss the opportunity to celebrate Halloween like a goblin, or perhaps a ghost?
Holding a Halloween festival at home is a nice idea and you can even award the best costume with a special candy treat or a creepy bottle of wine if you invite adults to share this spooky moment with you. With a little of imagination you can create quick Halloween crafts to decorate your home, while others are available at party supplies stores or online costumes and accessories shops.
Make sure that your home look creepy, but if your budget is short, remember the old ghosts’ trick and cover your furniture with white sheets and put a few others hanging here and there, including one covering an electric fan, if you have one, so it can “mysteriously fly” sometime during the party time. Sheets are cheap decorations as you can use those available for your bedrooms, and remember that sheets will not only protect your furniture but also will make your home look abandoned, the ideal climate for terrifying games.
Naturally, make sure to have enough pumpkins all over your house, whether real pumpkin fruits or those made of plastic and other material. Whenever it is possible a safe, put a candle inside the pumpkin or buy those decorative pumpkins that already com with it. Of course, you can use candles to illuminate all your rooms, but get those with different shapes and color including black, purple, orange, red and white and burn incenses close to them.
If you cannot use candles, cover your bulbs with red cellophane paper screens, but be cautious because high wattage bulbs can burn the paper. Create your own decoration with black and white cardboard cutting it with the form of vampires, witches, skulls, ghosts and pumpkins that later can be decorated with candies and give to your guests as a Halloween favor or souvenir.
An easy way to cover the walls, corners, doors, and windows of your home with spider webs is reinforcing a piece of black wool to decorate each place. Black and orange are the Halloween colors; put them everywhere, including orange flowers in black vases to create a funeral atmosphere. Round your Halloween decoration with accessories that you can find in specialty stores such as mooncostumes, at which you can find witch hats, spiders, brooms.
Erik Aronesty is an expert in party coordinating and Halloween costumes. Moon Costumes is a premier seller of a unique selection of adult and child costumes, masks, hats, wigs, and accessories. To learn more check out Horror costumes, child costumes, and Halloween Decorations.
Take your pick of Halloween treats and fun. This video is part of Witch Crafts show hosted by Cathie Filian, Steve Piacenza . SHOW DESCRIPTION :It’s the one day of the year when we all get to…
This might not be a great practice especially since children scare easily but still there are quite a number of relevant stories which you can tell during a storytelling session in a Halloween party or event. Even if it’s not Halloween, you will always have a request from your listeners to tell a scary story. So people have more excuse to demand a scary story during this day of the year when spirits and monsters are supposed to be free to roam the surface world.
Aside from scary stories, you can also narrate mystery type of stories. Having a storytelling session in your Halloween party program will keep the children quiet and at bay. This is also a good opportunity to prepare other things for the party.
What stories to tell? You can search the internet for various short scary stories that have both the Halloween scare factor and at the same time children will learn something productive and inspiring at the end of the story.
You can even draw from personal experiences or stories. It’s often “cool” hearing a story from someone who has experienced it first had or was really there. This gives the story a personal touch and the kids just love the idea of stories happening for real.
Remember not to overdo it though. These are children we’re talking about and if you scare them witless, they will certainly have nightmares and you’ll have parents breathing down your neck the next day. Now that would be a real scary situation for you as organizer or storyteller.
If you lack some modern shorts and have not time to prepare your own stories, you can always turn to the classics. There are several classic ghost stories that children nowadays have yet to hear.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of them. The headless horseman of Washington Irving is sure make some children gasp. You can tell the story of the Flying Dutchman, a mysterious ship that is said to be a doom ship that brings bad things to other ships that crosses their paths. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster is also always popular.
Another classic is A Ghost Story by Mark Twain which has several adaptations that you could read for the kid‘s enjoyment. Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows is said to be the best ghost story in history. You might also find some suitable adaptation for children somewhere in your bookstore or on the internet. Another work of Blackwood is The Empty House which is also pretty good.
Now, I have to remind you at this point that you will be reading these stories to children. You might want to kind versions that would be easier for children to grasp and understand. If you’re Halloween party is for adults, which I also think putting a storytelling session is a great idea, you can be as eloquent as you want. But in the meantime, simple and short adaptations would be better for children’s party.
If for some reason you can’t get any storytellers for your party, other options would be buying an audio or video CD of various ghost stories. There are several of these in the market and you can easily buy one off the rack of your favorite bookshop or audio store.
The idea here is to keep your options open. Of course Halloween parties involve game and prizes but having a Halloween storytelling session can be both fun and productive.
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