Martha Stewart's Childhood Halloween Memories

Facts from the original

• Martha Stewart is described as the founder and self-crowned Queen of Halloween who was once a trick-or-treating child.
• She recalled in her Remembering column from the September/October 1991 issue of Living that Halloween began on October 30 and the children called it "mischief night."
• On mischief night, windows were soaped, toilet paper was strung from the tallest tree, and chalk graffiti was scrawled everywhere.
• Martha grew up in Nutley, in a neighborhood she described as having parents not unlike her own when it came to Halloween.
• In her Remembering column from the Halloween 2000 special issue of Living, she said her father was an excellent conceptualist and visionary who always came up with the costume themes.
• Her father decided which of his six children would make a great pirate, matador, clown, or flapper.
• Her mother, Mrs. Kostyra, had dressmaking skills that were put to good use during the couple of weeks before October 31, when she dropped every other sewing project to concentrate on costumes.
• The costumes often took weeks to design.
• According to her Remembering column from the October 2003 issue of Living, her mother had help from attic trunks brimming with great accessories given by Aunt Clemy, who had access to vintage clothing through her job at a storage warehouse facility.
• Martha remembered an authentic matador jacket in white heavy silk, encrusted with gold braids, buttons, and trims, so tiny that it only fit her brother Erik until he was 12.
• There was also a black and crimson cape that Erik whisked to and fro with great aplomb.
• The matador's breeches did not exist, so her mother made a pair; she also found white stockings and fashioned silver buckles for his shoes out of sheet aluminum.
• The family's resourcefulness when a button or strap was missing is what gave each child's costume originality.
• One year Martha was Little Bo Peep, wearing vintage pantaloons, a delicate batiste shirtwaist, and charming plaid knickers.
• For that costume her mother made a black silk vest that laced up the front, and her father made her crook from a bent branch he found in a tree in their yard.
• The children often borrowed characters from comic strips.
• Martha was a successful Daisy Mae to her brother's Li'l Abner one year.
• They tried to dress their younger siblings as Shmoos, lovable creatures also from Li'l Abner, but could not figure out the physics of getting the rotund little figures to walk.
• As Martha and her siblings grew older, the transformation became less about costumes and more about makeup.
• She loved the years they dressed as flappers in beaded dresses and shapely shoes, with heads wound with scarves and cheeks and foreheads adorned with spit curls.
• Aunt Clemy had found feather boas and fur scarves for them, and they twirled their necklaces just as they observed in old movies and pictures.
• When asked whether making these costumes felt like a chore to Big Martha, she said, "Absolutely not. It was fun!"
• On the evening of Halloween itself, the children returned to school after dark all dressed up for the parade.
• Masked and carrying candlelit cardboard lanterns, they promenaded around the playing field until each child from kindergarten through grade six had been seen by all the spectators.
• Prizes were given for the most original, the silliest, the most hideous, and the scariest costume.
• After the formalities, the children threw their lanterns into a huge pile in the center of a field.
• Under the close supervision of Nutley's fire department, the lanterns were set ablaze in the biggest bonfire the children had ever imagined.
• The town ended its celebration with an hour of trick-or-treating.
• Martha recalled having a fabulous time, calling it the one time of year when the children could act with abandon.
• She said they found naughtiness all the sweeter in its rarity and were content the next day to be good little children again.
• The article is by Alexandra Churchill, a former digital editor for MarthaStewart.com, and was updated on October 29, 2024.