Hilarious Halloween: These Awkward Homemade Costumes Would Be Scary If They Weren’t So Hysterical
How did Halloween go from scary to silly so quickly? Or maybe it’s still scary, just in a different way. With Halloween coming up in less than two weeks, this video from the folks at one of our favorite sites, Awkward Family Photos, exposes one of Halloween’s modern terrors — homemade costumes.
The holiday of Halloween dates back hundreds, even thousands of years, starting in the culture of the Celts — an ancient people who more than 2,000 years ago were spread throughout what is now Europe. But with the rise of the Roman Empire, the Celts were pushed back into the British Isles and today are most closely identified with an ancient, mystical Irish culture.
The Celts celebrated a holiday called Samhain, which fell at the end of harvest season, the time when autumn became winter and, the Celts believed, the living and dead intermingled. As winter, the time of death, took hold, the Celts’ death god — Samhain — took the souls of the newly dead over to the other side.
When Christianity spread throughout Europe, this ancient Celt festival of the dead became All Hallows Eve, which was the night before All Saints Day, giving what to the Christians seemed like a bizarre and blasphemous pagan ritual a new meaning that made sense in the context of the new religion.
Eventually, this end-of-harvest festival mixed with the most modern religion of all, commercialism, to become the spectacle of costumes and candy that we know today as Halloween.
But not everyone wants to spend money on Halloween costumes. and after all, isn’t it more fun to do it yourself? Sure — but the results, well, they can be a little iffy.
Check out this Awkward Family Photos video, which combs through the site’s vast collection of, well, awkward family photos to put together this 90-second montage of some of the greatest homemade Halloween costume fails you’ll ever see.
Don’t let this video discourage you from creating your own Halloween costume, however. Have fun with it. Halloween is supposed to be fun, and what’s more fun that scaring yourself with your own incredible awkwardness?
