Halloween calls forth images of spirits, ghosts, vampires of the underworld as well as other scary monsters. It stirs up shock and fright and starts the heart pounding in dread of the mysterious and unknown. The words and phrases of Halloween and horror will always be synonymous. Consistent with the scary characteristics of this annual event, partygoers put on scary Halloween masks and other spooky and frightening face masks and outfits which start the adrenaline coursing.
The beginnings of Halloween spooky and frightening face masks start with ancient Celtic festivities. Hundreds of years ago, winter months were a period of adversity. The shorter days of the winter season were distressing and the pagans were fearful of going out after dark since they thought that on Halloween night when the human world combined with the afterworld, spirits came back to earth, hovering about and searching for fresh bodies to exist in.
In order to pacify the enraged ghosts they'd often burn bonfires, which were looked over by Druids, and they would sacrifice animals. In order to safeguard themselves these people would likely put on face masks created from animal heads so they could move about unrecognized, mimicking the actual dead spirits in order that the ghosts could confuse them for other spirits. Out of this practice came Halloween spooky and frightening face masks.
This specific observance of making use of terrifying masks carried on for hundreds of years until Pope Boniface IV proclaimed Halloween as a Christian holiday. However, men and women in Europe carried on with the old custom in order to fend off evil spirits. In America, celebrating Halloween was taboo by many right up until the last century. For these people, it absolutely was a satanic holiday. But during this time period, in order to control vandalism among young people, parents returned to the ancient Celtic practice of putting on face masks during Halloween, which would evoke fearfulness and amazement. The town of Anoka in Minnesota was actually the first one to observe Halloween in complete masked costumes in 1920.
Throughout the Celtic era, putting on face masks had been an issue of life or death, because the concern with the unknown surrounded everyone. Even so, as time passed, scary Halloween masks found a brand new significance. Today, it is a symbol of entertainment as well as just plain fun. These days, amongst the most common face masks are witches, werewolves and, ironically, hockey masks (because of Jason in the Friday the 13th movies). Young girls often wear witch face masks to look scary. These can be incredibly intimidating and frightening.
The werewolf face mask gets its source in Greek mythology. The human man Lycoan with his 50 sons attempted to amuse Zeus by giving him a bowl of human flesh. This so disgusted and enraged Zeus that he transformed all of them into werewolves. Thus the tale of werewolves came to America along with the immigrants, so nowadays huge numbers of people, especially children, like to put on werewolf face masks on Halloween.
The concept of sporting scary hockey face masks for Halloween is comparatively new, due to the series of horror motion pictures, Friday the 13th.
These days, Halloween spooky masks manufactured from rubber, foam, latex and even paper mache have shed their wicked associations and no more motivate amazement and fear. They are simply a part of a costume put on by those who join in with Halloween fun-making. These face masks of monsters, witches, demons, vampires, skeletons and mummies that are put on on Halloween night or at Halloween parties have kept their spooky and frightening look, but no longer terrify us.
Come and see all the scary Halloween masks that are easily available online. You'll be amazed how frightening these simple vinyl and plastic masks can look. We even found the lowest prices on them at the UltimateHalloweenSite.com
