Karen Wils photo Alisa, Bob and Ellen show off their costumes during the Halloween of 2004.

ESCANABA — Little painted clown faces and bedsheet ghosts, cowboys with boots and bandannas and angels with garland halos, peer from a stack of old Halloween photos.

Do you remember your very first Halloween costume?

Chances are it was homemade, simple or a hand-me-down.

Dressing up for Halloween has changed a lot over the years. Halloween was fun back when there was a bunch of little kids at home.

I recall the days of old when my mother had a big box of Halloween costumes, masks, hats and all sorts of dressing up stuff. The last week of October it came out and we got to go through it choosing what kind of character we would be that year.

We made things out of cardboard like angel wings, crowns and devil horns.

Halloween itself has transformed from the huge families of the 1960s to the COVID kids of the 2020s.

So much more caution and care is taken in the way we celebrate Halloween. Safety is the name of the game and for good reasons. Today, Halloween is more of a celebration of the harvest season. Hay rides, corn mazes and pumpkin patch fun outings start weeks before Halloween.

Schools, daycares, churches and businesses often put on costume parties and sometimes trick-or-treat.

The school Halloween carnivals of old created a mixture of chaotic and sweet memories. Nothing is more fun than dressing up your toddler in cute little puppy dog ears or a pumpkin costume.

Joining the mass crowd of parents, kids and grandparents streaming from classroom to classroom to try the fishing pond, cake walk, ghost tree, treasure chest and haunted house was exciting.

The smells of the carnival were unforgettable. Buttery popcorn, steaming sloppy Joes, fresh carved pumpkins and the sweet smell of candy, perfumed the night.

Costumes would come off in parts as the children scurried down the halls. By the end of the evening each kid had a bag full of little prizes and treats. All of the parents had tired aching feet.

When our kids were small they went to Holy Name School and enjoyed the harvest and Holy Day festival there. Many of the parents got into the fun and dressed up like saints and angels. My husband and I had as much fun as the kids did back then.

Carving jack-o-lanterns was a messy but marvelous ritual at our house. We always had a few pumpkins growing along the edge of our garden, so each person had their favorite.

Dad took charge of the paring knife. We voted on whether to have triangle eyes, round eyes, square noses or toothy grins.

But of course, the best part was watching the busy little hands scooping out the slippery seeds and slimy pumpkin guts.

Halloween with the family sure did change over a couple of decades. From trick or treating at Grandma’s house and school parties to Halloween dances and haunted houses, time marches on.

So even if you don’t have any little ones around for Halloween, do something fun anyway. Paint a pumpkin, eat some chocolate or pop some popcorn and reminisce.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.