Today, Halloween is the time of the year for a costume party, and when it comes to the theme of the costume, anything goes. But masking was once much more popular as a year-round activity. As recently as the early 20th century, according to History, Easter, New Years, and Valentine's Day could be an occasion for a costume party just as easily as Halloween, and masquerades were common. The Victorian era may have been when masking became a major component of Halloween; according to author David J. Skal, there is scant hard evidence for costumed revelry on Halloween night until the late 1800s.
Whenever they became associated with the holiday, Halloween costume parties were common by the end of the Victorian era. The costumes themselves weren't quite what we would expect to see today. Aside from paper masks, there were no costumes widely available in stores; a Halloween disguise was a homemade effort. It was rare to see a costume patterned after a particular figure from pop culture in the Victorian period, too. The specificity of character was trumped by fitting a set theme.
Popular themes for Halloween costume parties included subjects we still associate with the holiday today, such as ghosts, black cats, the moon, and the earliest haunted house attractions. But according to Halloween historian Lesley Bannatyne, fairy tales and nursery rhymes were also common themes.
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