The Aesthetics of Halloween in the 1920s

Since Halloween is this week, I wanted to do a little retrospective and take a look at what Halloween decor and costuming looked like 100 years ago, in the 1920s. Being a big fan of both Art Deco and Art Nouveau, I’ve always found the 1920s and 1910s to be particularly glamorous and aesthetically pleasing decades in regards to interior design, graphic design, and fashion. So let’s step back in time and take a look at some old magazines and photos to see what we can glean. 

Halloween costumes depicted in the November 1925 issue of “The Delineator”.

Children in Halloween costumes in Edmonton, Canada, circa 1915.

While Halloween has roots going back to pre-Christian Celtics harvest traditions, the modern form of Halloween that we are familiar with came to be in North America. in the 20th century, as North America suburbanized and urbanized, the emphasis on harvest and other pastoral aspects of the holiday decreased, (though the pumpkin, of course remains an iconic part of Halloween). And by the 1920s Halloween had transformed from something more wholly DIY and “grassroots”, to the highly commercialized and ritualized holiday we think of today, though of course DIY costumes and decorations are still popular even in 2026.

The classic motifs and imagery that we associate with Halloween such as jack o’ lanterns, bats, witches, ghosts and black cats, had fully solidified as Halloween imagery by the 1920s, and magazines and newspapers were publishing articles on how to best throw a Halloween party, not too dissimilar to the type of party we might throw today, which makes it an interesting time period to look back on.

Halloween paper crafts shown in the “Bogie Book”, a paper craft book published in 1920.

While guides to throwing Halloween parties were starting to crop up, mass production of course, was not at full swing in the pre WW2 era, and decorations largely remained home made and were usually crafted out of paper, cloth and other easy to acquire materials. By comparison to today’s elaborate decorations these homemade crafts might seem shoddy but personally I find them cozy, quaint and nostalgic, perfect for fall. The images above and below this paragraph were taken from the yearly Halloween themed, “Bogie Book” a book made by a paper company Denisons to promote uses for their paper products.

Another page of the “Bogie Book”, published in 1920, describing how to throw a Halloween party.

A 1929 photograph of a group of children in Toronto dressed for Halloween.

Likewise, costumes were almost always handmade as well, and much like how nowadays, where you might see amazing costumes on the internet, but more typical costumes in real life, magazines and newspapers show such as the page from the 1924 November edition of the Delineator advertised fairly elaborate costume ideas and patterns, whereas actual photographs from that decade tend to show simpler home sewn costumes.

Halloween costumes depicted in the November 1924 issue of “The Delineator”, with descriptions included below.

As far as other 1920s Halloween related items and decorations go, Halloween postcards seem to have been quite popular, as they kept coming up in my search for vintage 1920s Halloween images. I’ve personally never heard of sending a Halloween themed post card, but according to Wikipedia, it was a popular tradition from the 1890s until the advent of the home telephone. I found these old school hand painted ones from 1910 -1920 delightfully charming, and though they are a little early for the time period this article focuses on, and I felt I had to share them, especially since it’s likely that similar cards would have been shared throughout the 1920s.

More of these postcards, and plenty of other vintage Halloween images can be found in the sources I’ve linked bellow!

A Cat and Jack O’ Lanterns on a vintage Halloween postcard, wishing the reader a “Merry Halloween”.

A rather creepy postcard of a bunch of people with Jack O’ Lanterns for heads sitting in a field, perfect for Halloween.