All About Vintage Halloween

Most collectors consider the “Golden Age” of Halloween collectibles to be from about 1920-1945, give or take. It is this time period that produced some of the most delightful and artistic Halloween items. Yet, there are quite a number of wonderful pieces from the 1950s that would fall under this category. The party decorations, and other goods from the first four decades of the 20th Century have a unique quality that has since been unrivaled. At the time, Halloween party decorations were considered disposable. You would use them once for your party and then pretty much everything would get thrown away. Today we can thank those frugal citizens from that era who decided to keep their Halloween decorations for next year's use. Without them today's collectors would have nothing left to acquire.

A major reason why these pieces are so delightful is because during the 1920s and 1930s Halloween was mostly considered an adult holiday. Only when Trick-or-Treating became popular in the late 30s did Halloween become more associated with children. Because of this the imagery on the early pieces is much more threatening and mischevious. In fact, a marked shift can be noticed as you look at Halloween items from the 1920s through the 1940s—the imagery gradually gets less threatening and more cute as manufacturers were marketing their items more for families/kids than adults.

No discussion on vintage Halloween material could be complete without mentioning Germany. During the period between the two World Wars, Germany produced much of the Halloween material that is coveted today. Mostly women, working in cottage industries, would handcraft and hand paint the items that would get shipped to the US for sale to consumers. These items were ALL meant for export to the US as Halloween is not celebrated in Germany. Considering this, the volume of items that still exist today is (relatively) impressive. The Germans are famous for their composition candy containers, lanterns and other items, but personally I feel the pinnacle of their production was the heavily embossed paper German Die Cuts. These are among my favorite Halloween collectibles.

Another pair of major producers of Halloween items from this period are two American manufacturers. The Beistle Co. and Dennison. Of the two, Beistle was the more prolific and dominated the industry. Today, many early Beistle items are as sought after as the German pieces.




				It all began centuries ago, with the ancient Celts. The Celts were an agrarian society that relied on their ties to the land. Their culture was inextricably linked to the cycles of nature. The bounty and harvest of summer and early fall eventually gave way to the hard brutal months of winter. Their gods were gods of nature and the cycles of the seasons. At the end of what in the Gregorian calendar is now October, the ancient Celts celebrated a ritual called Samhain (pronounced SOW-en). Contrary to anything you may have heard, Samhain was a peaceful festival, celebrating the bounty of the harvest. Held to pay respect to the gods for giving the people enough food for the winter, Samhain was more like our modern Thanksgiving. To the Celts, Samhain was the boundry between the old season which was dying away and the new year which now began with winter. Images of death have always been a symbol for change and the morphing of one time into another. Therefore the Celts believed on the night of Samhain, that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest. Thin enough, in fact, that the souls of the dearly departed could cross back over into the living world and join in the harvest celebration. Hence this night's association with ghosts and spirits. Fast forward several centuries to the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. The young Catholic Church set out to convert as many followers as possible across Europe. Eventually their influence spread to the Celtic people. While the Catholic Church saw the Celts' ancient gods as pagan, they were smart enough to realize if they just steamrolled over their beliefs, the church would meet with more resistance than conversion. In order to appease the Celts, they allowed them to keep their same rituals and celebrations as long as they were now for Christian reasons. The church established the day following Samhain, November first, as All Saint's Day, also called All Hallow's Day. As you may know, hallow is an old word for sacred. The previous evening of October 31st, instead of celebrating Samhain the Celts were now celebrating All Hallow's Eve, or Evening. Through the vagaries of language, this night came to be called “All Hallow's E'en”, which by our modern times was shortened to “Halloween”. Through the intervening centuries, this night of celebration transformed from being a festival of departed Celtic souls to becoming associated with black magic, the devil, witches and their other evil cohorts. But, as time passed, most of these religious connotations fell away and finally when Irish Catholic immigrants came to the United States, they brought Halloween with them. By the end of the 19th Century, Halloween was essentially an American holiday with little or no religious aspects. Its popularity grew until Halloween became an American staple. By the early 20th century it was in full swing. The decades following this era gave rise to today's wonderful collectible items.




				The term “Silver Age” is a phrase I made up to describe what I consider to be an often times overlooked era by Halloween collectors—the years between 1960 and 1985. While pieces from this time period are not yet considered “vintage”, they will be someday, and I think care should be taken to preserve them just as with the pieces from the Golden Age. One thing immediately noticeable about items from those decades is their marked difference in graphic style from the earlier pieces. The style of this era could be considered by some to be uninspiring, but this is largely a matter of opinion. I feel that the graphic styles in Halloween items from this period, particularly the 60s and 70s can be quite wonderful. During this time, we still have Beistle producing items at full swing and Dennison too (both are still in business today). One of the hallmarks of pieces from this period is the widespread use of Day-Glo inks to print the die cuts. It gives the pieces a unique look that is specific to that era. Special care MUST, in fact, be taken to preserve these items as flourescent inks are vastly less resistant to fading than even the vintage colors used in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of the fact that items from 1960-1985 have not yet become “officially” collectible there is a dearth of information available about their history and manufacture. I will try to provide some information on this site, although I don't have much to go on myself. At least I can show what I feel are some fantastic examples.




				As they say, history repeats itself. While, for several decades, from the 1940s through the 1980s, Halloween became a "kid-centric" holiday, nowadays it has moved back the other way. Starting in the 1990s and moving through and into the 21st Century, Halloween has become one of the most celebrated holidays in America among adults and children alike. It's popularity has exploded over the last ten to fifteen years, making it second only to Christmas in annual revenues generated. Going along for the ride is an increased interest in vintage Halloween collectibles. The number of people interested in this genre has also increased greatly over the last decade, especially with books being published on the subject and the proliferation of eBay. However I think there is more to it than this. First, the folks of my generation who were kids in the seventies and early eighties, seem to be less inclined to let go of the things we loved in childhood than previous generations. I think that has contributed to the recent growth in the popularity of Halloween. In addition to that I believe we are witnessing a phenomenon that has pervaded many areas, not just Halloween. I believe it is partly a sociological reaction to the dawn of the 21st Century. While we can't now imagine living without our computers, our DVDs, Bluetooths, high-speed internet, cell phones and all the other gizmos that have made our lives both easier and more complex, as Don Henley said, “Somewhere back there in the dust, is that same small town in each of us.” Not surprisingly, there seems to have been a sudden spurt of nostalgia that hit our culture right around the year 2000, and continues today. All of the sudden “retro” was in. From a resurgence of fashions from the 1970s to design trends harkening back to the 1940s and 1950s. Halloween followed suit in this widespread trend. Since around that same time there has been an explosion of companies, folk artists, and holiday product manufacturers, that are producing Halloween decorations in a “vintage” style (even Target!). This would have been almost unheard of prior to 1995. I believe it's that very human need to look back before we are able to move forward. Those wonderful images of vintage Halloween connect us with a more innocent time that no longer exists. It reminds us of the magic of childhood in a symbolic way. I also think after years of cheap production values and having the idea that “progress for progress' sake is good” blindly pounded into our heads, that people are realizing how wonderful these old design styles really are—in any aspect of life, not just Halloween material. What in 1990 would have been considered outdated and passé is now being appreciated for its own merits. Everything old is new again.