Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween, this is the reason
Halloween is a favorite holiday associated with sweets, mysterious creatures and spooky events. The characteristic colors of the holiday that is celebrated on October 31 are black and orange, and their meaning is actually related to the season in which it is celebrated.
According to Lesley Bannatyne, a writer and historian, this spooky holiday in the West was not celebrated en masse until the late 1800s, especially in the United States, and the celebrations were far more oriented to handmade decorations.
During that time, all the decor and costumes were handmade, and the housewives would display pumpkins and corn husks in their homes.
"The natural colors they could work with in late October were mostly orange and yellow they got from pumpkins, chrysanthemums, marigolds, corn, bales of hay,” Bannatyne said, “But the Halloween party decoration was also creating an alien spooky atmosphere, for which you needed a dose of darkness."
View this post on Instagram
The companies eventually commercialized holiday colors in the form of paper costumes and party decorations. The Dennison company presented its first paper decorations for Halloween in 1909.
They had creatures from Halloween stories, such as witches, cats, and bats, which were often printed in black while food for harvest and pumpkin creatures were usually orange or yellow.
The Beistle company also helped establish black and orange as Halloween colors using the shades in their pictures. However, initially, there were exceptions to these now customized colors for Halloween.
View this post on Instagram
In the early 20th century, some Halloween postcards had witches in red or purple dresses and lanterns in green.
“When other companies noticed the growing popularity of Halloween, candy makers, costume designers, and mass media followed suit, creating and marketing their products with popular folklore images and now recognizable colors,” Bannatyne adds.
In terms of the symbolic meaning of orange and black for Halloween, Bannatyne points out that black is the first representative of darkness because Halloween has always been considered a nocturnal holiday. While orange is the color of the fire and the autumn since the shade is reminiscent of the harvest.
View this post on Instagram
“These colors make sense: Halloween is on the verge of winter and has always referred to the transition from the bright part of the year (summer) to the darker (winter),” the historian said.
By: Helen B.
