Halloween originated as an end of harvest celebration called Samhain when it used to be regarded as the Celtic new year. The ancient Celts thought that on 31st October (now called Halloween) the boundary between the dead and the living dissolved and that the living were threatened by the dead who could cause problems such as sickness or by damaging crops. The Halloween costumes and masks that are used to mark Halloween today go back to the Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them.

So even though celebrating Halloween is much more prevalent in the United States than Europe or the UK, the origins for the tradition came primarily from Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

Halloween imagery tends to involve death, evil and the occult which is why we have the scary Halloween costumes that everyone runs around in today as they go about their trick or treating visits to peoples homes. In Scotland there are still traditions of children going 'guising' rather than trick or treating, where they sing a song or tell a story for their reward, no where near as much fun.

Traditional Halloween Costumes represent , ghosts, skeletons, witches and devils and these days are often influenced by the entertainment industry with people copying their favorite TV, movie or pop music characters.

A great example of this is the Michael Myers mask that was made famous in the film called 'Halloween' which was written and directed by John Carpenter in 1978. Other characters that have influenced scary Halloween costumes are Freddy Krueger from a 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and Jason Voorhees from Friday 13th when it was actually Jason's mother dressed as her dead son that was doing the grisly deeds, a great idea then for scary Halloween costumes for women.

A costume is actually the description given to a set of clothing that someone might wear to say something about their personality, hence the reason actors wear costume to reinforce the character they are playing in a film or play. Halloween costumes tend to be placed under the category of 'fancy dress' which is an attire worn to attend a party when it is given a particular theme, so if you are wearing a Freddy Krueger fancy dress costume for Halloween then that is perfectly acceptable attire for the evening.

Thanks to Wikipedia for most of this information.

One of the best places to get really cheap affordable Halloween costumes for kids is ToyRUs

So for any mums and dads looking to get the kids kitted out ready for Halloween use the link above to find the cutest scary Halloween costumes you can for your kids. But remember this is ToysRUs in the UK.

Check out what offer Amazon has for fancy dress costumes this Halloween Holiday