Halloween's Origin "I'm A Mouse, Duh!"
Halloween’s strange evolution from Celtic spirit-warding to sexy kitten attire.
Halloween's Origin
The holiday we now consider a playful masquerade—when we dress as sexy nurses, 2000’s pop stars, and scantily clad nuns; ring doorbells in hopes of full-size Snicker bars; and scatter our lawns with plastic skeletons—descended from the Celtic festival of Samhain.
On October 31st, in ancient Ireland, it was believed that the veil separating the mortal realm from the spirit world thinned, allowing supernatural beings to walk among the living. In Celtic lore, the night teemed with apparitions like the impish, shape-shifting Pukah and the headless Lady Gwyn who hunted souls with her black pig companion. Most dreaded were the Dullahan—headless riders clutching their own heads atop flame-eyed steeds, their mere appearance an omen of death. Believing their ancestors returned to the mortal world on this fateful night, Celts placed offerings at village borders and donned monstrous disguises to fool the Sidhs—fairies known for kidnapping their dearly departed. They carved ghoulish faces into turnips to ward off evil spirits – the root of today's jack-o'-lanterns.
In the ninth century, Pope Gregory rebranded Samhain as All Hallows' Eve, beginning its transformation. Victorian society then tamed these ancient terrors into parlor games, where young women used mirrors and bobbing apples to glimpse their future loves. Finally, America gave Halloween its sugar rush—Woolworth's debuted mass-produced costumes in the 1930s, candy companies created bite-sized treats, and death omens gave way to plastic decor in a now multibillion-dollar celebration.
Witch’s Brew
How did the humble broom become the witch’s ride of choice? In medieval Europe, these domestic tools transformed into symbols of female power and persecution. The first witch-on-broomstick images appeared in Martin Le Franc's 1451 "Le Champion des Dames," showing women of the Waldensian sect—considered heretical for allowing female priests—soaring through the night. But it was the notorious 1324 trial of Lady Alice Kyteler that intensified the connection, when investigators discovered 'a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staff, upon which she ambled and galloped through thicke and thin.' These 'flying ointments' contained potent hallucinogens like nightshade, henbane, and mandrake, which witches allegedly applied to intimate areas of their bodies rather than ingesting.
Fifteenth-century theologian Jordanes de Bergamo captured medieval anxieties when he wrote that 'the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it... or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places.' While these confessions were extracted through torture, they reveal how the Church interpreted women straddling broomsticks as both sexually and spiritually deviant, transforming pre-Christian phallic fertility rituals into evidence of demonic corruption. The enduring image of the witch on her broomstick thus became a powerful symbol of everything the Church feared: women's sexual freedom, their use of mind-altering substances, and their spiritual independence.
Wax Madame
The haunted house industry began with a French artist's brush with death. Born in 1761, Marie Tussaud, trained in anatomical wax sculpture, went from teaching art at Versailles to facing the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. To prove her allegiance—and save her life—during the French Revolution, Marie agreed to cast in wax the freshly severed heads of her former employers, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
What began as a commission under duress became a macabre empire. In 1802, Tussaud turned her collection of revolutionary-era death masks into a traveling show through Britain, finally settling on London's Baker Street in 1835. Her exhibition grew to include English royalty, politicians, and notorious criminals—complete with gruesome crime scene dioramas. Tussaud's quest for authenticity led her to collect chilling artifacts, convincing condemned prisoners to donate their clothing and acquiring the infamous Hampstead pram used to transport dismembered murder victims.
Though death masks existed for centuries, Tussaud pioneered their commercial potential, creating Victorian London's most notorious tourist attraction: “The Chamber of Horrors”. Her death in 1850 marked the end of her life but not her legacy—she'd established the framework that would inspire centuries of haunted attractions.
Licentious Behavior
From ancient Samhain's monstrous disguises to the "sexy mouse" costume immortalized in Mean Girls, Halloween dress has undergone quite the transformation. In Victorian America, partygoers channeled their ghostly obsessions into spooky costumes and favored ”exotic" characters like Egyptian royalty. By the 1920s, the tradition evolved into playful paper costumes, with revelers donning crepe-paper hats and aprons to transform into cauldrons or cats.
Yet the seeds of more sultry Halloween wear traces back to the masquerade balls of the 18th and 19th centuries, where "respectable" women shed their usual modesty for risqué milkmaid outfits and pantaloons. From London's high society to the art circles of Paris – where impressionist Manet captured the scandalous glamour in his painting "The Masked Ball at the Opera" – these parties offered a thrilling escape from social constraints. The costume-fueled debauchery grew so wild that Venetian authorities had to regulate mask-wearing to curb licentious behavior.
At last, the modern era of “sexy Halloween” began with 1970s gay parades across major U.S. cities, where celebrants wore costumes as daring statements of liberation. While Playboy aesthetics saturated '90s culture, Samhain’s ancient monsters and Victorian ghosts gave way to sultrier fare. Every costume concept – from firefighters to woodland creatures, storybook characters to household objects – got a provocative makeover. Mean Girls crystallized this evolution in 2004 with its iconic "I'm a mouse, duh!" marking Halloween's wild transformation from a festival of supernatural terrors to a holiday where even a lobster costume comes with garter belts.
As you choose your character du jour this festive season, we encourage you to have fun with it. Whether it be as simple as a black cat or as elaborate and silly as a handmade paper refrigerator, it's a time of year for laughter, candy, and relief from all such seriousness.