Scottish and Irish immigrants, who were fleeing the Great Famine of 1845-1852, brought Halloween to the U.S. People celebrated Halloween quite differently than how most Americans celebrate it today. Early Irish-American Halloween celebrations usually began with a big meal, with foods and rituals to divine the future.
Halloween Feast
A traditional Halloween entree was colcannon, a casserole of mashed potatoes, milk, onion and kale. People served it with lots of butter, if they could afford it. The cook would hide prizes in the colcannon. If you found a ring, it meant you were the next to get married. A coin indicated you’d have good luck for the rest of the year. Alternatively, they might scoop the first and last spoonful of colcannon into a girl’s stocking. Then they’d hang that from a nail in the door. The next person to enter through that door supposedly would be her future husband.
Another Halloween treat was barmbrack, a sweetbread filled with fruit, and sometimes hidden prizes. In this case, finding a ring foretold of an impending romance, whereas a thimble meant you would never get married. A piece of rag meant bad luck or poverty. A girl could divine her future husband by eating an apple while combing her hair in front of a mirror. If she did this at midnight, on All Hallows Eve, she would see her future husband gazing back at her. Alternatively, she could walk out into the night, blindfolded to a cabbage patch. The first cabbage she picked, would predict the size and shape of her future husband. And if she peeled an apple and let the shavings fall to the ground, she might be able to discern her sweetheart’s initials.
Bonfires and Mumming
After, the traditional Halloween supper, people had bonfires, games, and went Mumming. Mummers in costumes (often in drag) marched door-to-door, performing rhyming plays, often in exchange for food, treats, or even booze. People were mumming in Ireland, Scotland, Mann and Wales, as well as several other European countries at least as far as the Middle Ages. It is still practiced in parts of the U.S., particularly in Pennsylvania. Irish and Welsh miners brought the tradition when they immigrated there in the mid-1800s. Tolstoy portrayed mumming in War and Peace. For a fascinating history of Irish mumming, check out Henry Glassie’s, All Silver and No Brass (1975).
Mumming was likely the origin of trick-or-treating, as mummers sometimes threatened mischief if treats weren’t provided. Some of the pranks and mischief people did back then included removing the hinges from people’s gates; placing farmers’ wagons or livestock on top of their roofs; stringing ropes across walkways to trip people in the dark; mowing down their shrubs; knocking over swill barrels and outhouses; and even detonating small bombs.
Pranks and Mischief
By the late 1800s and early 20th century, however, Halloween pranking had taken on a much more anti-authoritarian edge. Kids would vandalize their principal’s home, set off fire alarms, throw bricks through shop windows, attack well-dressed pedestrians and streetcar passengers with bags of flour, and strike out against authority, in general. Sometimes, homeowners would fight back, shooting kids with buckshot or saltpeter. By World War II, the authorities were so alarmed that they started to claim that these pranks were threatening the war effort by wasting scarce resources and disrupting the sleep of weary war workers.
Efforts to sanitize the holiday began in the 1930s, when “The American Home” magazine, and radio shows, like the Jack Benny Show, began promoting the idea of parents taking younger kids out trick-or-treating responsibly and politely. In 1950, the Senate Judiciary Committee, under President Truman, tried to transform Halloween into a more family-friendly holiday, renaming it “Youth Honor Day.”
It was around this time that costumes started to become cuter and less scary, and that parents started organizing neighborhood haunted houses and parties to keep the kids out of mischief. In the 1952 Donald Duck cartoon, “Trick or Treat,” Huey, Dewey, and Louie tried to convince mean old Uncle Donald to give them candy instead of the explosives he wanted to give them. But the biggest changes came when food, tobacco, and toy companies saw the huge profits to be made from this new trend and began massively marketing candy and costumes in the weeks leading up to Halloween. By 1965, corporations were making $300 million per year in profits from Halloween costumes and candy.
Modern Pranks and Mischief
Of course, the mischief never completely disappeared. Teenagers and some adults continue to light fireworks, and commit pranks, like leaving burning bags of poop on doorsteps, or blowing up jack-o’-lanterns. In 1994, MIT students dismantled a cop car and reassembled it on top of the Great Dome on the Cambridge campus. There’s an annual naked pumpkin run in Boulder, Colorado. And the parties can get pretty raucous, particularly San Francisco’s Castro Street Halloween (at least it was until the city authorities took it over, moved it downtown, and sanitized it).
I remember one Halloween Castro Street Party back in 1991. It was one month after an LGBTQ rights protest march. Police chief and mayoral candidate, Frank Jordan, foolishly decided to join the march. Even more foolishly, he went without body guards. Protesters remembered how abusive SFPD had been toward the LGBTQ community when he was chief. They surrounded him, punched him, and yelled, “GO HOME!” Someone knocked him down. He got up and fled, losing a shoe in the process. But unlike Cinderella, no one returned his shoe or asked for his hand in marriage. Instead, activists created a line shoes down the length of Castro Street, the night before Halloween. The very last shoe was a replica of Jordan’s lost shoe. Tthe actual lost shoe is now at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society’s archives in San Francisco). Activists then doused the shoes in lighter fluid. And then ignited them in a fiery celebration of disdain for the homophobic, pro-business police and future mayor. (You can hear live coverage of the assault on former SFPD Chief Frank and Mayor Jordan here).