Crazy Santa Costumes

Fancy Dress Ideas For Christmas
If you are a little bored of the traditional red and white image of Santa, here are a few alternative fancy dress ideas for Santa this Christmas that I have managed to find on the web.

The Grinch Santa Claus Costume
The Grinch Santa costume is also fun. If you do not know the story, the Grinch is a character that was developed by Dr Seuss and it was he that stole Christmas and I think makes a fun alternative to the traditional white bearded Santa. This Grinch fancy dress costume comes with the Grinch mask with attached green fur fabric whiskers. The Headpiece has the red Santa hat attached. Red long sleeved Santa jacket and completed by a wide black belt with an over-sized brassed belt buckle.

Bad Santa Costumes
Red and White not the colours for you? How about black and white? I managed to find this Bad Santa costume that has the words 'Bah Humbug' written on the Santa hat, perfect for the Santa with a bad streak in him!

Take a look here if you are looking for a Traditional Santa Claus costume

Traditional Santa Claus Costumes

The Traditional Red and White Santa Outfits
So where did this iconic image of Santa in his red suit come from? Some people incorrectly think that the Coca-Cola Company invented the red Santa costume in the 1930's. Coca-Cola only used the character because his well-known colour scheme is similar to that of the company logo. So even though Coke were not the first to put the red suit on Santa, the company did play a large role in making the character much more popular. It was way back in 1885 that we find the first Christmas card depicting Santa Claus in his famous red suit. Printed in Boston by by Louis Prang although I am not sure if he was the first to put Santa into the red and white. The original inspiration came from Saint Nicholas of Myra, in the Netherlands. In Dutch he was called Sinterklaas, who was helped by his servants called Zwarte Pieten, who we now call his elves.


Fancy Dress Santa Claus Costumes

I guess these days when we think of Christmas, the first name that comes to mind is Santa Claus. The great thing about Santa as a character is his well known fancy dress costume. The red and white Santa Costume, or Santa suit with long white beard and Santa hat is about as well known an icon in the fancy dress world as you can get. If you are looking to buy a Santa outfit there are literally thousands to choose from and all from the outside look fairly similar. From the super deluxe Santa suits to cheap Santa beards and hats, you are sure to find a costume that will suit your needs as well as how deep your pocket goes, but all this choice can also be a little daunting. My advice with so much choice would be to shop around, spend a bit of time and you are sure to fined the right xmas costume for you.

A great place to start is with a shop like Amazon who have a huge variety of costumes that you can quickly browse through:

USA:
Santa Costumes on Amazon.com


UK:
Santa Costumes on Amazon.co.uk

Top Selling Halloween Costumes for 2008

Jokers' Masquerade Halloween Costumes recently published an article on their website, featuring the best selling Halloween costumes for 2008. It actually makes quite interesting reading and is a nice insight into how well certain costumes do over the busiest time of the year for the fancy dress industry. I have listed the top 10 Halloween costumes below in order of popularity.


Interesting points:

• The Ghostbusters costume has been number one for the last two years!
• 8 out of the top ten Halloween costumes are adult male costumes, I would have thought more womens Halloween costumes would have made the top ten? Perhaps girls like trying different costumes and to make sure that they are not wearing the same dress as someone else at the fancy dress party!
  
• The Jigsaw, Wizard Wanda and Joker Costumes are new costumes for this year.
• 6 of the top ten Halloween costumes are inspired by movies. (Ghostbusters, Edward Scissorhands, The Saw, Batman, Nightmare On Elm Street and Harry Potter)
• There are 2 zombie costumes in the top 10 and no Ghosts costumes

Below are the top 10 best selling Halloween Costumes at Jokers' Masquerade in 2008:

1) Adult Official Deluxe Ghostbusters Costume
I find the popularity of the Ghostbusters Halloween costumes somewhat perplexing, sure during it's time way back in the 80's it was a great film and yes the fancy dress costume is pretty cool, but for it to be the No. 1 selling Halloween costume for two years running is quite an achievement!

2) Adult Edward Scissorhands Costume
Again, like the Ghostbusters costume, the Edward Scissorhands Costume comes from a film, and this one is not even really about ghosts or Halloween, so again for me it is pretty interesting that it is one of the most popular Halloween costumes.

3) Adult Grave Groom Zombie Costume
Finally coming in at number 3 is a typical Halloween type fancy dress costume. It aint a ghost but what could be better than a scary zombie Halloween costume.

4) Adult Tinkerspell Costume
The first womans Halloween costume and it is a twist on a scary witch costume with a hint of a fairy costume included. I think what makes this costume popular is that most girls want to look good at a party, even Halloween parties, so who would pick a witch costume when you can dress in a sexy evil fairy costume!

5) Complete Zombie Adult Costume
The second Zombie costume, and still no ghost costumes (only a ghost killer) - kind of obvious who is winning the zombie / ghost popularity contest at Halloween!

6) Adult Official Saw Jigsaw Puppet Costume
Another costume that takes it's inspiration from a film, this time it is the very scary Saw series of horror films.

7) Adult Evil Jester Costume
One of my favourite themes as being the most scary costumes are scary clown costumes and you don't get much better than this very popular evil jester costume.

8) Adult The Joker Deluxe Costume
I thought that with the popularity of the Dark Knight Batman film and the sad passing away of Keith Ledger, that The Joker Costume may have been higher up the list than in 8th place.

9) Adult Freddy Krueger Costume
A Nightmare On Elm Street is another popular Halloween film and so makes a popular Halloween Costume.

10) Adult Wizard Wanda Costume
This is an interesting one at number 10 as it comes from the Harry Potter films, so I guess will be more popular in the UK than the USA and only the second female Halloween fancy dress costume in the top 10.

Lewis Hamilton Costume

I have some friends that work for Vodafone and they were saying that the new and youngest ever Formula 1 world champion, Lewis Hamilton was coming in to visit their offices as part of his sponsor obligations. They were really excited and said that some people were going to be given the change to race against him on a simulator. This got me thinking are there any formula one fancy dress costumes or even better Lewis Hamilton costumes?

Lewis Hamilton Costume
Well to my surprise there are! The Official Lewis Hamilton fancy dress costume is actually the Mclaren Racing overalls which could equally be called by Lewis's team mate, a Heikki Kovalainen costume. What ever your favourite driver, the F1 racing suit only comes in childrens sizes for ages from 3 to 7 and is fully quilted and has embroidered sponsorship logos.

lewis hamilton costume on Amazon.co.uk


There are also Fararri costumes available, but I could not find any other F1 teams fancy dress costumes out there.


Valentino Rossi Costume
If cars are not your thing and you child is into motorbikes, you could also be the current MotoGP world champion in the Valentino Rossi Costume, which also only comes in childrens sizes.

Valentino Rossi Costume on Amazon.co.uk

Sexy Batgirl Costume: Superhero Costumes

As a fancy dress theme, superhero costumes are one of the most popular, it seems that everyone secretly wishes that they had superpowers. Well if you can't manage to learn how to fly or lift cars with your small finger the next best thing is to dress up in a Superhero costume and pretend.

Batgirl Costumes
One of the best selling superhero fancy dress costumes for women is this sexy Batgirl costume from the super sexy secret wishes DC super hero's range. The costume includes the black one piece dress with attached cape and embroidered bat logo, two burnished glovelets, rubber belt, matching knee high boot tops plus the distinctive Batgirl eyemask. This Batgirl outfit comes in most adult sizes including plus size and there are also teen versions of the costume as well.

I guess one of the reasons that the Batgirl fancy dress costume has become so popular has to do with the Batman film The Dark Knight. Since the release of the film both Batman and The Joker costumes have become extremely popular, this is especially true for the Joker Costume which was one of the best selling Halloween costumes all around the globe this year. So I guess why should the girls not join in the action with Batgirl? Created by Bob Kane and Sheldon Moldoff, Batgirl first appeared in a Batman comic (#139) way back in 1961 where her name was originally "Bat-Girl"

US Shoppers
Batgirl Costume on Amazon.com

UK Shoppers
Find the Batgirl Costume on Amazon.co.uk

If you are looking for a similar costume, sexy and still a Superhero, try the Catwoman Costume

oogh and one last thing: Did you know that the image of a bat on the Batman and Batgirl fancy dress costume is there to frighten criminals... woo scary stuff!

Angel Costumes: Christmas Costume Ideas

An Angel fancy dress costume as a Christmas costume idea is something that I think many people miss when trying to come up with something slightly different to wear to the office Christmas costume party. We all know that an Angle or Star is often placed on top of the Christmas tree, but have you ever wondered why?

Couples Costumes
Both the Angel and the Star come from the Nativity story with the star representing the Star of Bethlehem and the angel from the host of angels. With this in mind I suppose a great idea for Christmas couples costumes could be to get your partner to dress up in a Star costume and you could dress up in an as the angel!

Adult Angel Costumes
An angle outfit For me make excellent elegant outfit as a Christmas theme costume. If you look on the web there are plenty of adult angel Halloween costumes out there and I have even found plus size angel costumes available so you should not have much difficulty in finding one in your size, price range and style.

Fallen Angel Costumes
These devil angel costumes are for those of you who would rather be a little wicked this Christmas! There are some excellent dark angel costumes available. Look out for the Naughty and Nice Angel Halloween Costume, that is half a devil and half an angel, for those that can't decide what side of the fence to sit on! Find a Fallen Angel Costume

Sexy Angle Costumes
I suppose another twist on the fallen angel would be a sexy angel costume. I never really thought of angels as being sexy before, surely they are fare to innocent to be sexy, but yes there are plenty of sexy angel Halloween costumes out there and I suppose if you have the figure to pull it off why not - perhaps this sexy fancy dress could could even turn out to be a present for your partner!

Child Angel Costumes
Just like the adult versions these days there are plenty of options for kids angel costumes in terms of sizes and price ranges available. One thing that I have noticed though is that within the range of childrens angels costumes is that there are very few of the "fallen angle" type available, perhaps though this is a good thing!

Infant Angel Costumes
Unfortunately I have not been able to find any infant or toddler angel costumes, there are plenty of toddler lamb costumes but no angels, which is a shame as I think they would be excellent. If anyone else happens to find any, please leave a comment to let me know about it. I suppose you could always make your own angel costume, here is how to make an angel costume: Home Made Angel Costume

Nativity Costumes
I don't feel that Nativity costumes have to be exclusively for children, I think is a great idea if you are looking at dressing up as a group. There are some great Christmas costume ideas here: The Three Wise Men Costumes, Shepherd Costumes, Sheep Costumes, Donkey Costume, Mary, Joseph and even a Jesus costume although personally I would treat these with respect. Then as mentioned there are the Angel costumes as well as the Star costume.

Where to Buy Angel Costumes
Good places to get all these angel costumes this Christmas include Amazon Angel Costumes
as well as Jokers' Masquerade Christmas Costumes

Here is hoping you have a very Merry Christmas!

Cheap Christmas Fancy Dress Costumes

If you are planning to have a fancy dress party or dress up in a costume this Christmas, don't wait until the last minute, now is the time to buy you Santa costumes, elf costumes and sexy Santa costumes (if you are a girl.)

I have just done a quick look at most of the major fancy dress websites out there and quite a few of them have Christmas themed costumes on special offer or in the sale categories. I bet you this will soon change in time for Christmas once the demand rises.

For example Jokers' Masquerade fancy dress have already updated their website for Christmas, but if you take a look at their winter sale costumes there are a bunch of Christmas themed costumes in there including:

Santa Suit
An adult deluxe Santa suit costume which is on sale at £99 and is probably a little too pricey for most people, but if you are after a quality Santa costume this may save you a few pounds.







Sexy Santa Costume
I also quite like this Miss Santa Deluxe Trousers Top & Hat is a real sexy Santa costume which has been reduced from £29.99 down to £14.99, so a good bargain for a quality costume.









Childrens Santa Costume
If you are after cheap Christmas costume for your children, I really like this Santa Scooby-Doo Christmas Costume that is now for sale at £17.99 which I think is pretty decent value for money as it is a fully licensed product.


These are just a few of the cheap Christmas costumes available from the Jokers' Masquerade winter sale that you may wish to check out.