I’m convinced that people of all ages love everything make believe. We are fascinated with what we are not and with what we could be. We love to be swept away into stories other than our own. We go to movies, see live plays, and read novels to keep us dreaming. Costumes are one of the key elements that escort us into make believe no matter how young or old we are.
Think about it, from the time we were little we celebrated a holiday called Halloween by shopping for or having our mothers make us the perfect costumes. Having the right costumes was the biggest deal. We got to wear them to school and show off to our teachers and friends and we got to parade around our neighborhoods and display our costumes proudly to everyone we saw. We loved to dress up as princesses, ghosts, or our favorite characters from cartoons. Putting on our prized costumes meant much more than putting on an outfit. With our costumes we put on an entirely different identity so that we didn’t just dress up as a princess but we really became one. We actually became our favorite cartoon characters and our favorite good and bad guys.
The older children get, the less interested they...