Halloween

Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after supernatural figures such as vampires, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. Over time, in the United States, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.[82]

Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween by the late 19th century.[123] Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children. The first mass-produced Halloween costumes appeared in stores in the 1930s when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in the United States.

The yearly New York Halloween Parade, begun in 1974 by puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee of Greenwich Village, is a large Halloween parade and one of America's only major nighttime parades (along with Portland's Starlight Parade), attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience of over 100 million.[154] The largest Halloween parade in the world takes place in Derry in Northern Ireland, which was named the "best Halloween destination in the world" having been voted number one in a USA Today readers' poll in 2015