Yes, my experience was pretty much the same here in my area of NC, also in the 60s. We didn’t go in costume to school but we got to draw black cats, witches, color construction paper pumpkins and jack o’lanterns, and one of my teachers even let us make up and write our own Halloween stories that we then got to read in front of the class (3rd grade). Not one person, that I’m aware of, ever got hysterical about it being called Halloween. We just did it, had a great time, and the next day it was all over and we were all looking forward with excitement to Thanksgiving. It was a great time to be a kid.
As surely as that's true, as surely will it nary be seen again.
Halloween was for the night, and there were no razor blades in the apples, etc.
Of course there were problems back then as well, big ones.
But it was still America - we were still strong and confident, and the future was still a time of hope . . .
That sounds like my school years too, except it wasn’t quite over the next day. That next day was for trading candy.
Same here, except it was the ‘70s for me. We had fun making decorations at school, and some teachers gave out candy, but that was as far as it went. The costumes came out at night-—and I mean that literally. Those were still the days when kids went trick-or-treating in the dark with flashlights.
In my elementary school, also in the 1960’s, we did, in fact, wear our Halloween costumes to school on Halloween, or most kids did anyway. This was on Long Island, NY.
The kids would all line up in the hallway during recess and, with marching music playing outside of the school, all the kids would march across the school parking lot and across the athletic field in a school-sponsored Halloween parade.
I remember one kid was wearing a white T-shirt with the word QUARANTINE on it, blue jean cut-offs, and he had big red spots painted on his face and legs.