Halloween is creeping around the corner, and seeing everyone plan out their costumes and decide on couple or group themes got me thinking back to my childhood and the outfits I wore. As I grew older, I started having mixed feelings about Halloween. I felt out of place trick-or-treating as a middle schooler, and I started losing motivation to dress up every year. I still like Halloween, and always love a full pillowcase of candy, but it’s not the same excitement from when I was a kid. There’s just something about being a kid that made it so much better.
And for me, that something was coordinated family costumes.
It went like this: my parents would pick a theme and have each of us — my sister, my mom, my dad, and me — dress accordingly. This went on for several years, and even though my sister and I decided to move on from full-family costumes, we still did a couple coordinated sister outfits. My mom has been sending me photos of all our old fang-tastic looks, which got me wanting to go back and do it all over again. And even though I was crying in almost every picture, I loved dressing up with my family and trick-or-treating together. Being able to look back on those memories makes me so happy and grateful that I had such fun Halloween experiences as a child.
My family dressed as pirates for our costume theme Oct. 31, 2009. We also decorated our wagon to look like a pirate ship.
Another thing to note: most of our Halloween costumes, be it family or solo, were homemade (go Mom!). Unfortunately, I didn’t always appreciate that. In second grade, I broke tradition (and my mom’s heart) by wanting to get a store-bought butterfly costume. I really liked that costume; it was fun to wear and I looked like a boo-tiful butterfly. But looking back on it now, I loved our homemade costumes so much more because those costumes were memorable and made with love.
My favorite family theme and costume has to be when we dressed up as Beauty and the Beast. I was Belle, my sister was Mrs. Pots (with Chip), my mom was Lumière, and my dad was the Beast. I looked so cute in my little yellow dress that my mom made for me. And my mom had speakers playing the soundtrack of the movie as we walked through the neighborhood. It was spooktacular!
This is us in our "Beauty and the Beast"-themed costumes Oct. 31, 2008. My dad won a costume contest that day.
Family costumes make the experience of trick-or-treating one to remember. I know for a fact that I can’t recall all the solo costumes I wore throughout elementary school, but I do remember all the family ones. Being dressed up all together and having that shared experience really strengthened our family bond and made Halloween greatly anticipated. We all had so much fun, and those family costumes cannot compare to any solo outfit I wore.
Recalling my experiences, I wonder if other families did the same. Since I haven’t seen any other families dressing up in coordinated costumes outside my own family, I wanted to investigate.
I decided to look around on some popular Halloween store websites to see if they have specific collections of family costumes. On Spirit Halloween’s website, it has a group and family costume section, which features a good range of different themes families could dress in, so that was a good sign. Party City has a very extensive collection of family Halloween costumes, too, which makes me even more hopeful. To confirm, I called the local Party City and asked if the staff has observed families buying costumes together. To my delight, the manager said yes! She noticed the most popular group themes are Ghostbusters, Descendents, and Beetlejuice, to name a few, and she mentioned that this is a frequent sight, meaning families purchase themed costumes every year.
My family as dressed for our garden theme Oct. 31, 2006. I was the little bee, my sister, Isabella, was the flower, my mom was the ladybug and my dad was the gardener.
Whether it’s homemade or store-bought, it’s good to know family Halloween costumes aren’t dying. Although the days of coordinated family costumes for me have passed, the memories of those fun times will always haunt me (in a good way).
Evelyn Strauss (she/her) is a freshman studying international studies and human biology.
