Halloween in the 1960’s
November 23rd, 2009 by John WolfeIn today’s video entry, You Tube user robertwmartens has presented some old family footage of Halloween during his youth. Robert’s entire montage is sort of a wacky mashup of a lot of great 1960’s Halloween stuff, but the retro film clips of him and his family trick-or-treating are my favorites.
Though I didn’t start foraging for Halloween treats until twelve or so years after this footage was shot, from what I can recall, Halloween costumes looked about the same in the late 70’s.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
That was priceless!! I forgot about those songs! Notice how the houses don’t seem to be decorated much? I remember there’d be a jack O’ lantern in each window, but that was about it. One person dressed in a costume to answer the door and we all dared each other to knock. I’m so glad people are embracing the season more and more, the problem is there’s fewer people letting their kids go house to house, so all us adults get ripped off. We decorate and get into the season and only the teens are knocking. Thanks for the blast from the past!
November 24th, 2009 at 10:43 am
My God, did you notice the size of those leaf bags??!!!! I’ve never seen bags so large. “Grandpa” must be very happy he took that footage of the kids now, given how some 40 years has gone by and everyone is grown up. My sd found his slides collection he created back in the 70’s of the family and found some real winners. Every Sunday he would put a white sheet against the living room wall and show us the new pics he took in slide foremat while we munched on popcorn and 7-up soda
I would have to agree with ya though, some of those costumes are still around today..like the skeleton get up. I love retro stuff, this was cool to watch.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
autumnforest,
I probably watched this video four or five times until I noticed there were no decorations. Since Halloween decor is really a huge part of my life, coming to that realization made me a little sad. However, I did notice how big that one treat was and how proud the boy was to receive it… that’s a lot different now too.
You’re right, it seems more and more are attending “Zoo Boos,” Church trick-or-treat parties and mall walks during Halloween night nowadays. Thankfully, my parents’ neighborhood still brings them in pretty good though. Thank you for checking out the video.
Goldie,
I did catch those humongous bags! They were bigger than the kids. LOL! Funny you should mention slides — as I was watching this video last night, I couldn’t help thinking how fortunate this family was to have a video camera in the 60’s. Most families were doing good to simply have a still camera. We, too, have a huge collection of slides that we used to view on a big sheet in the living room. Wow, old times!
Of course, if my family had a video camera in the 60’s I’m sure the footage would be full of lots of people flipping the bird — primarily my uncle and grandpa!