@moondrake Never – not even Christmas. I was born into a fundamentalist religion where we only celebrated the holidays mentioned in the bible. When I turned 18, I left that religion and became an anti-theist. I do not even celebrate my own birthday and never have since the day I was born. I’m now 51.
When I was thirteen, my (brand new) step-mother accompanied us trick-or-treating. We set out on our route and walked up and rang the doorbell of the first house on the next block over where an older gentleman opened the door and commented that our costumes were very well made. My brother says, “She came as a witch”, while pointing at my step-mother.
I was nearly always a witch. You just need a good pointy hat, and long hair, and a willingness to act like an idiot. I had all that covered.
It was a more innocent time, too, those long ago days in the fifties. There were plenty of old raggedy sheets on kids in those days, too (I never did that one; too hard to see where you’re going).
When I was six years old, my sisters tried to dress me up as OJ Simpson for the church Halloween party. This was of course during his trial, and I was given one of those toy knives that blade goes into the handle.
My Mom was a very crafty person (in the best sense of the word). She made elaborate costumes for all three of us. Batman (the '60s TV show version), Lone Ranger, El Zorro, Caballeros (and princesses, ballerinas, cowgirl, a ‘girl Zorro’ and others for my sister)… really amazing work.
Halloween was special (and still is when we can). When we could no longer go out (sigh), we used to decorate the front rooms in the house so the kids coming to the door would see green glowing things, skeletons, feel damp strings hanging from the doorframe, and hear the scary parts of the Disney Haunted House album playing in the background…
Never celebrated Halloween - I grew up in a strictly open-minded orthodox christian ex-communist family. I was never stopped from doing anything, I never felt compelled to care about silly holidays. Now I celebrate Samhain and the Red October Revolution out of nostalgia.
@serpent
What’s silly about running around w your friends getting candy when you are young (and once you hit elementary school, getting to do it with no parents!), and having yet another excuse to party when you are older?
@f00l But I didn’t have any friends as a child. I thought books and music were more interesting. When I was a teenager I preferred getting drunk and getting into fights to civilized partying (because people suck and there is stress to vent out). Now I am just not into partying anymore, because responsibilities.
Just to be clear, I don’t believe in civilized partying. There is no such thing as moderate drinking for me, I don’t enjoy being slightly “tipsy”. Partying should put one’s health in serious danger, so getting shitfaced and violent is a must. Otherwise there is no point, it’s just a waste of time and there is no catharsis. Partly as a consequence of this, I don’t party anymore.
@serpent
Well, that childhood sounds a little constricted or lonely, perhaps. We liked books and music plenty (my parents would either yell or sign when another of my enormous bookcases collapsed from overweight and they had a fair number of books of their own.)
But Halloween, tho a lot of fun, is not a necessity. I presume you survived in decent shape. I presume you’ve got the “having fun” thing mastered now also. And “fun” can come accompanied by books and music, so … hope you found your cultural accommodations.
@serpent
To your elaboration: that’s a narrow definition of the benefits of partying. Although “shitfaced” or at least “quite fucked up” was a frequent thing when I was young.
But parties can vary in scope as well as intoxicant level. I would have valued getting sorta messed up, or way messed up; or trance dancing; or driving all night for the hell of it; or getting a little messed up and parking under a flight path and lying on the car to watch the planes come in; or doing the same thing sober; or walking and talking all night “figuring it all out” (so we thought); or going to some strange trippy place to see some strange trippy goings-on; or getting a bit messed up and seeing how much math you could do that way; or same and then reciting shit and discussing its meaning; or doing some not-too-tough group walkabout in some fabulous park messed up or no; or same and mountain climbing, or messing around in White Sands; or just going someplace to drink and see who is there and what they have to say; or same while driving out so far into nowhere that it was all dark and you could really see the sky; or same while deciding you’d never visited El Morro and if you drive 800 miles straight, you can - we always did try to recruit someone who would be sober as driver - it’s a big world both out there and in terms of possibilities in the mind; I’ve seen only the tiniest corner.
@f00l Oh, I am fine. I was never lonely as a child. I had people I socialized with, just not the crowd that would go trick-or-treating. And now I just don’t care, with all the work (which in my case is at least somewhat rewarding) there is no time, nor desire to go out and actively party - I have my wife and I keep in touch with old friends at a distance. As such, Halloween never mattered to me as an engaging holiday.
BUT I of course appreciate it from the scientific and historical point of view. In essence, similar events were present throughout mankind’s history. In Jungian terms, it’s a date that celebrates the archetype of the Trickster, but also ties it with various ancient pagan holidays, most notably Samhain. So it certainly has a right to exist as it is within the current cultural paradigm.
@serpent
Yeah Halloween is not a commercially invented holiday like “Grandparents Day”.
I don’t get shitfaced or care about partying either, not for decades. Don’t bother with Halloween at all unless a friend I wanna see is having a party. So something for kids who might ring. I got mine, they can have theirs.
We none of us did much self-conscious literary or historical or archetypal reference partying. That was more for reading and talking. But those parties are fine too, as long as they’re fun.
Even when young, intoxicants and catharsis was a minority goal. Sure, sometimes. More common was exploration. Big universe, go forth. Which may explain while alcohol was a minority intoxicant way back when I did Intoxicants.
You might wanna take a look at the Day of the Dead. Big deal and v creative. Also deep roots.
I didn’t do college lit or history or Jung or philosophy or Greek or mytho-archetype or whatever and only a wee little of MLA stuff and that out of curiosity; but I used to spend many hours reading big heavy books by big heavy names somewhat, and talking long hours with others who read or taught such books, so sometimes I can fake it.
That sort of education is getting rarer. It has considerable and profound value, but can lead some to go astray into astonishing pomposity and pretension. Some of the professional organizations cultivate the “we’re above you” madness.
The biggest pity might be that people who wanna take up serious philosophical or cultural literacy as adults can be so at sea without paths - and with little assistance. And sometimes the people who are comfortable in those waters aren’t very welcoming. And it’s a quite different thinking habituation. Someone too used to a scientific or digitally informed perspective has to learn new ways to evaluate and consider information. It’s not so much difficult w practice, but socially can be very daunting to get the exposure.
There can be common cultural habits of discussion among those who swim well here (which are sometimes rather narrow-minded), which can be used as tests or weapons against a newbie in the room, and sometimes you see masses of snobbery. And it takes time to learn the terrain and see who is interesting, and who is, no matter how brilliant, utterly full of shit in their own head. (Tho these can be drawn out with a little work.) And it takes time and practice and exposure to learn the current crop of tools of critical discourse (those can go thru fashions and I’ve zero idea what the latest is.)
Most theory-curious young people would prob rather follow the path of tech literacy they grew up immersed in. Better econ and career value. Better commonality. High literary subjects are having a bit of a “what’s the point” image situation, which is not accurate, but was brought on in part by the conduct and publishing wars of the university elite.
The common online informal perpetual internet riff we all know - the rolling waves of google, ESPN, 4chan, Reddit, rifftrax, YouTube, news feeds, forums, anyplace that gathers the results of the creative, even if the venue smells - never require this high-lib-arts background, and the net has its own poetics. All those Great Greeks would, if alive now, find a use for our common digital world. All sorts of new communication styles ebb and flow, some of them will stick and most of will float away, leaving behind the “newest new”,
So they (net ways and memes) beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(Which is a corrupted quote from Fitzgerald, Gatzby)
Part of me wishes i had been fed, when young, more tales of the wine-dark sea.
From The NY Times:
HOMER’S SEA: WINE DARK?
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: December 20, 1983
IN another of the digressions that often
give spice to the pursuit of science,
scholars find themselves wrestling with the concept of Homer’s ‘‘wine-dark sea.’’ The expression appears dozens of times in those epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Yet the sea in question, the Aegean, is no less blue or blue-green than any other. What did Homer have in mind?
The question is being raised once again in recent issues of Nature, the British science journal. It was proposed in one letter to the journal that perhaps the wine the Greeks drank was indeed blue.
@f00l I live in El Paso, where Dia de los Muertos is more enthusiastically celebrated than Halloween. I love both. Right now molds to make sugar skulls and Katrina dolls are at the cash registers of all the stores. I’m going to be selling art at a teachers’ conference on Nov 1 and will have some Dia de los Muertos items.
@moondrake
Day of the Dead is really creative. I am too far north for it. Makes me wish sometimes I lived in San Antonio or El Paso. I don’t know El Paso, but I do love it. Last time I was there was to see the Stones at the Sun Bowl. I love scrabbling up the mountains (they are not difficult) and hiking in that park.
Most of them were the cheap plastic mask and a horrid rendition of whatever we were suppose to be, but a few times our mom made our costumes. The only homemade one I really remember was the year I was a Jawa and little brother was Darth Vader. I was a lot taller than him, since I was 3 years older, so it was a short Darth Vader and tall Jawa, which looked really funny. I loved that Jawa costume; it was made of burlap.
my mom always dressed us up like hobos… every year… dad’s big old clothes, a hat, black smudge on your face… and send you on your way unsupervised !! at least 50% of the kids were dressed like hobos, cause it was easy for the parents… there wasn’t much to buy in halloween costumes at that time and what there was , was too pricey… anyways, all of us kids were free to run around and go door to door and collect candy!!! ain’t gonna lie, it was great fun!!!
(A hobo is a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, especially one who is impoverished. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States around 1890. Unlike a “tramp”, who works only when forced to, and a “bum”, who does not work at all, a “hobo” is a traveling worker.)
@mick You nailed Halloween in the 80s… at least in my neighborhood.
We had a “Halloween box” that dad dragged down from the attic every year. It was a mish mash of costume props, but in hindsight was pretty sad. Scratchy beards, fake teeth and the like. Every year without fail it wasn’t “what do you want to dress as” it was “what kind of hobo do you want to be?”
Given that it’s my dad’s birthday on Monday, yeah, we never really did Halloween. Especially since he never really did Halloween as a kid (given my grandmother I am not sure he did birthdays so much, either) and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so there was nowhere to trick-or-treat at.
The last time I went trick-or-treating, my mom wanted candy, so my brother and I threw on a couple pairs of doctor’s scrubs, threw fake blood at each other, and I carried around a squishy red ball and a fake knife. We were the live organ donor transplant doctors from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”
My mom was (well, actually, is) artistic and a decent seamstress. I don’t ever remember getting to pick what I wanted to be, but costumes were always elaborate.
The one I remember most was a jack-o-lantern - it was a wire frame nearly 3’ around (I remember barely fitting through doors, so I’m using that as a gauge) with thick orange fabric and a built-in green hood. I remember it because it was also the hottest halloween on record at 80 degrees, and my 3rd-grade-self sweat profusely during the school’s downtown parade.
The only one I really remember was from when the Duracell batteries with the built-in testing strip were the hot new thing, that was what I went as. The battery itself was an upside-down trash can with the top painted copper. Then my father and I fabricated a strip of LEDs running up the middle of the front that would light in sequence with the press of a button. That was a fun one.
I went as the Tin Woodsman, a rather elaborate costume. When I grew out of it, I graduated to the Cowardly Lion costume, which was wayyyy elaborate. Mom was a master craftsman.
Don’t remember much about costumes from when we were kids; Mom probably has slides (yes!) packed away somewhere.
As a young adult, ensembles were elaborations of pirate or Robin Hood. Today I kind of like the idea of SCA or Civil War re-enacting, tho I haven’t taken that plunge.
When my kids were younger, we had fun working on their costumes: Ash Ketchum/Pokémon, Ron Weasley, Speed Racer, robots of various shapes/sizes, even a water molecule (“dihydrogen monoxide”: giant blue hoop/donut for O with 2 smaller craft-store Hs attached to headband rods). Good times
Never “celebrated” Halloween.
@PlacidPenguin Ditto. None of those pagan holidays.
@therealjrn
@cengland0 Not even Christmas? My family is of Irish descent, so those “pagan” holidays are part of our cultural heritage and ancestral religion.
@moondrake Never – not even Christmas. I was born into a fundamentalist religion where we only celebrated the holidays mentioned in the bible. When I turned 18, I left that religion and became an anti-theist. I do not even celebrate my own birthday and never have since the day I was born. I’m now 51.
When I was thirteen, my (brand new) step-mother accompanied us trick-or-treating. We set out on our route and walked up and rang the doorbell of the first house on the next block over where an older gentleman opened the door and commented that our costumes were very well made. My brother says, “She came as a witch”, while pointing at my step-mother.
She wasn’t wearing a costume.
Dad laughed his ass off. She stormed home.
Best Halloween EVER.
A mixture of all of the above over various years.
I was nearly always a witch. You just need a good pointy hat, and long hair, and a willingness to act like an idiot. I had all that covered.
It was a more innocent time, too, those long ago days in the fifties. There were plenty of old raggedy sheets on kids in those days, too (I never did that one; too hard to see where you’re going).
When I was six years old, my sisters tried to dress me up as OJ Simpson for the church Halloween party. This was of course during his trial, and I was given one of those toy knives that blade goes into the handle.
Mom said no.
@Moose I don’t know why I felt compelled to figure out your current age.
/giphy stalker
@RiotDemon Starred for a David Rasche gif. Haven’t seen this show, but man, do I love “Sledge Hammer”.
@RiotDemon Glad it wasn’t just me.
@serpent I have no idea. I love the randomness of the /giphy function.
/giphy random
My Mom was a very crafty person (in the best sense of the word). She made elaborate costumes for all three of us. Batman (the '60s TV show version), Lone Ranger, El Zorro, Caballeros (and princesses, ballerinas, cowgirl, a ‘girl Zorro’ and others for my sister)… really amazing work.
Halloween was special (and still is when we can). When we could no longer go out (sigh), we used to decorate the front rooms in the house so the kids coming to the door would see green glowing things, skeletons, feel damp strings hanging from the doorframe, and hear the scary parts of the Disney Haunted House album playing in the background…
@duodec I’m tempted to go trick or treating at the neighbor’s houses of where I’ll be passing out candy.
Adults should get candy if they’re dressed up… At least that’s how I feel.
@RiotDemon Pfft. Around here, adults that go around with the kids are frequently given their own treats in the form of an adult beverage.
@smyle haha, that’s cool. I’ll stick with the candy. I don’t want to trip over my robe.
@duodec when we got too old to trick or treat, we did scavenger hunts. Lists of Halloween related stuff.
Same thing, just different stuff.
Never celebrated Halloween - I grew up in a strictly open-minded orthodox christian ex-communist family. I was never stopped from doing anything, I never felt compelled to care about silly holidays. Now I celebrate Samhain and the Red October Revolution out of nostalgia.
@serpent
What’s silly about running around w your friends getting candy when you are young (and once you hit elementary school, getting to do it with no parents!), and having yet another excuse to party when you are older?
@f00l But I didn’t have any friends as a child. I thought books and music were more interesting. When I was a teenager I preferred getting drunk and getting into fights to civilized partying (because people suck and there is stress to vent out). Now I am just not into partying anymore, because responsibilities.
Just to be clear, I don’t believe in civilized partying. There is no such thing as moderate drinking for me, I don’t enjoy being slightly “tipsy”. Partying should put one’s health in serious danger, so getting shitfaced and violent is a must. Otherwise there is no point, it’s just a waste of time and there is no catharsis. Partly as a consequence of this, I don’t party anymore.
@serpent
Well, that childhood sounds a little constricted or lonely, perhaps. We liked books and music plenty (my parents would either yell or sign when another of my enormous bookcases collapsed from overweight and they had a fair number of books of their own.)
But Halloween, tho a lot of fun, is not a necessity. I presume you survived in decent shape. I presume you’ve got the “having fun” thing mastered now also. And “fun” can come accompanied by books and music, so … hope you found your cultural accommodations.
@serpent
To your elaboration: that’s a narrow definition of the benefits of partying. Although “shitfaced” or at least “quite fucked up” was a frequent thing when I was young.
But parties can vary in scope as well as intoxicant level. I would have valued getting sorta messed up, or way messed up; or trance dancing; or driving all night for the hell of it; or getting a little messed up and parking under a flight path and lying on the car to watch the planes come in; or doing the same thing sober; or walking and talking all night “figuring it all out” (so we thought); or going to some strange trippy place to see some strange trippy goings-on; or getting a bit messed up and seeing how much math you could do that way; or same and then reciting shit and discussing its meaning; or doing some not-too-tough group walkabout in some fabulous park messed up or no; or same and mountain climbing, or messing around in White Sands; or just going someplace to drink and see who is there and what they have to say; or same while driving out so far into nowhere that it was all dark and you could really see the sky; or same while deciding you’d never visited El Morro and if you drive 800 miles straight, you can - we always did try to recruit someone who would be sober as driver - it’s a big world both out there and in terms of possibilities in the mind; I’ve seen only the tiniest corner.
@f00l Oh, I am fine. I was never lonely as a child. I had people I socialized with, just not the crowd that would go trick-or-treating. And now I just don’t care, with all the work (which in my case is at least somewhat rewarding) there is no time, nor desire to go out and actively party - I have my wife and I keep in touch with old friends at a distance. As such, Halloween never mattered to me as an engaging holiday.
BUT I of course appreciate it from the scientific and historical point of view. In essence, similar events were present throughout mankind’s history. In Jungian terms, it’s a date that celebrates the archetype of the Trickster, but also ties it with various ancient pagan holidays, most notably Samhain. So it certainly has a right to exist as it is within the current cultural paradigm.
@serpent
Yeah Halloween is not a commercially invented holiday like “Grandparents Day”.
I don’t get shitfaced or care about partying either, not for decades. Don’t bother with Halloween at all unless a friend I wanna see is having a party. So something for kids who might ring. I got mine, they can have theirs.
We none of us did much self-conscious literary or historical or archetypal reference partying. That was more for reading and talking. But those parties are fine too, as long as they’re fun.
Even when young, intoxicants and catharsis was a minority goal. Sure, sometimes. More common was exploration. Big universe, go forth. Which may explain while alcohol was a minority intoxicant way back when I did Intoxicants.
You might wanna take a look at the Day of the Dead. Big deal and v creative. Also deep roots.
@f00l @serpent
I feel like I should say something at this point, but your conversation was not translated into concepts my brain can process at the moment.
@PlacidPenguin
I didn’t do college lit or history or Jung or philosophy or Greek or mytho-archetype or whatever and only a wee little of MLA stuff and that out of curiosity; but I used to spend many hours reading big heavy books by big heavy names somewhat, and talking long hours with others who read or taught such books, so sometimes I can fake it.
That sort of education is getting rarer. It has considerable and profound value, but can lead some to go astray into astonishing pomposity and pretension. Some of the professional organizations cultivate the “we’re above you” madness.
The biggest pity might be that people who wanna take up serious philosophical or cultural literacy as adults can be so at sea without paths - and with little assistance. And sometimes the people who are comfortable in those waters aren’t very welcoming. And it’s a quite different thinking habituation. Someone too used to a scientific or digitally informed perspective has to learn new ways to evaluate and consider information. It’s not so much difficult w practice, but socially can be very daunting to get the exposure.
There can be common cultural habits of discussion among those who swim well here (which are sometimes rather narrow-minded), which can be used as tests or weapons against a newbie in the room, and sometimes you see masses of snobbery. And it takes time to learn the terrain and see who is interesting, and who is, no matter how brilliant, utterly full of shit in their own head. (Tho these can be drawn out with a little work.) And it takes time and practice and exposure to learn the current crop of tools of critical discourse (those can go thru fashions and I’ve zero idea what the latest is.)
Most theory-curious young people would prob rather follow the path of tech literacy they grew up immersed in. Better econ and career value. Better commonality. High literary subjects are having a bit of a “what’s the point” image situation, which is not accurate, but was brought on in part by the conduct and publishing wars of the university elite.
The common online informal perpetual internet riff we all know - the rolling waves of google, ESPN, 4chan, Reddit, rifftrax, YouTube, news feeds, forums, anyplace that gathers the results of the creative, even if the venue smells - never require this high-lib-arts background, and the net has its own poetics. All those Great Greeks would, if alive now, find a use for our common digital world. All sorts of new communication styles ebb and flow, some of them will stick and most of will float away, leaving behind the “newest new”,
So they (net ways and memes) beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(Which is a corrupted quote from Fitzgerald, Gatzby)
Part of me wishes i had been fed, when young, more tales of the wine-dark sea.
From The NY Times:
HOMER’S SEA: WINE DARK?
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: December 20, 1983
IN another of the digressions that often
give spice to the pursuit of science,
scholars find themselves wrestling with the concept of Homer’s ‘‘wine-dark sea.’’ The expression appears dozens of times in those epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Yet the sea in question, the Aegean, is no less blue or blue-green than any other. What did Homer have in mind?
The question is being raised once again in recent issues of Nature, the British science journal. It was proposed in one letter to the journal that perhaps the wine the Greeks drank was indeed blue.
<and the article goes on>
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/20/science/homer-s-sea-wine-dark.html
/image Acropolis from the sea
@f00l I live in El Paso, where Dia de los Muertos is more enthusiastically celebrated than Halloween. I love both. Right now molds to make sugar skulls and Katrina dolls are at the cash registers of all the stores. I’m going to be selling art at a teachers’ conference on Nov 1 and will have some Dia de los Muertos items.
@moondrake
Day of the Dead is really creative. I am too far north for it. Makes me wish sometimes I lived in San Antonio or El Paso. I don’t know El Paso, but I do love it. Last time I was there was to see the Stones at the Sun Bowl. I love scrabbling up the mountains (they are not difficult) and hiking in that park.
Most of them were the cheap plastic mask and a horrid rendition of whatever we were suppose to be, but a few times our mom made our costumes. The only homemade one I really remember was the year I was a Jawa and little brother was Darth Vader. I was a lot taller than him, since I was 3 years older, so it was a short Darth Vader and tall Jawa, which looked really funny. I loved that Jawa costume; it was made of burlap.
my mom always dressed us up like hobos… every year… dad’s big old clothes, a hat, black smudge on your face… and send you on your way unsupervised !! at least 50% of the kids were dressed like hobos, cause it was easy for the parents… there wasn’t much to buy in halloween costumes at that time and what there was , was too pricey… anyways, all of us kids were free to run around and go door to door and collect candy!!! ain’t gonna lie, it was great fun!!!
(A hobo is a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, especially one who is impoverished. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States around 1890. Unlike a “tramp”, who works only when forced to, and a “bum”, who does not work at all, a “hobo” is a traveling worker.)
@mick
And there were evolving and substantial hobo ethics, language, signs, cultures.
Thx. Love your costumes.
@mick You nailed Halloween in the 80s… at least in my neighborhood.
We had a “Halloween box” that dad dragged down from the attic every year. It was a mish mash of costume props, but in hindsight was pretty sad. Scratchy beards, fake teeth and the like. Every year without fail it wasn’t “what do you want to dress as” it was “what kind of hobo do you want to be?”
Fun times.
Given that it’s my dad’s birthday on Monday, yeah, we never really did Halloween. Especially since he never really did Halloween as a kid (given my grandmother I am not sure he did birthdays so much, either) and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so there was nowhere to trick-or-treat at.
The last time I went trick-or-treating, my mom wanted candy, so my brother and I threw on a couple pairs of doctor’s scrubs, threw fake blood at each other, and I carried around a squishy red ball and a fake knife. We were the live organ donor transplant doctors from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”
With a late October birthday and two geek parents, an elaborate costume was a guarantee. Good times.
My mom was (well, actually, is) artistic and a decent seamstress. I don’t ever remember getting to pick what I wanted to be, but costumes were always elaborate.
The one I remember most was a jack-o-lantern - it was a wire frame nearly 3’ around (I remember barely fitting through doors, so I’m using that as a gauge) with thick orange fabric and a built-in green hood. I remember it because it was also the hottest halloween on record at 80 degrees, and my 3rd-grade-self sweat profusely during the school’s downtown parade.
The only one I really remember was from when the Duracell batteries with the built-in testing strip were the hot new thing, that was what I went as. The battery itself was an upside-down trash can with the top painted copper. Then my father and I fabricated a strip of LEDs running up the middle of the front that would light in sequence with the press of a button. That was a fun one.
I went as the Tin Woodsman, a rather elaborate costume. When I grew out of it, I graduated to the Cowardly Lion costume, which was wayyyy elaborate. Mom was a master craftsman.
Don’t remember much about costumes from when we were kids; Mom probably has slides (yes!) packed away somewhere.
As a young adult, ensembles were elaborations of pirate or Robin Hood. Today I kind of like the idea of SCA or Civil War re-enacting, tho I haven’t taken that plunge.
When my kids were younger, we had fun working on their costumes: Ash Ketchum/Pokémon, Ron Weasley, Speed Racer, robots of various shapes/sizes, even a water molecule (“dihydrogen monoxide”: giant blue hoop/donut for O with 2 smaller craft-store Hs attached to headband rods). Good times