HIJACKING HALLOWEEN, FLAPPER STYLE! by Marisa Masterson

SaturdayEveningPost23Oct1920



 Trick or treat! Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat.

That simple rhyme, one I learned early in life, carries a threat that forced cities to act. There's more to it. If you don't, I don't care. I'll pull down your underwear.

Halloween postcard, Custom from Folklore

A threat? Yes. And a much safer one than what actually went on in the 1920s in the dawn of Halloween as we know it today.

True, folklore indicates that there had been a tradition centuries earlier in Europe. People went from house to house on All Souls' Day, offering to say prayers for the dead in return for the gift of little cakes. Even earlier, the Celts had the practice of wearing masks on October 31, to disguise themselves from discovery by the wandering spirits of the dead. 

Paper mache mask

Those were only shadows of the Halloween to come in the twentieth century. Folklore took a back seat to vandalism and mischief, such as tipping over outhouses. A wonderful example of Halloween 'fun' was included in To Kill A Mockingbird. Local children went into the home of the very deaf Barber sisters. The kids moved every piece of furniture to the basement as their Halloween prank. 

Mischief like that escalated in the cities during the Twenties. Wandering bands of older children smashed storefront windows and set fires. Tere were reports of pranksters unbolting streetcars, sawing down telephone poles, and even cutting power lines. This was the chaos that led cities to invent tricker or treating and organized Halloween parties.

With that came the first ready-made costumes, such as the popular Mickey Mouse. Or there was the easy-to-make at home ghost out of an old sheet. Paper mache was also popular, with rough results, like the clown in the photo from the 1920s.

https://www.facebook.com/FallRiverHistoricalSociety
1920s paper mache jack o'lantern

In the 1920s, the first store-bought decorations for the holiday were produced. This was when the orange and black skeletons and pumpkins became rooted as synonymous with the day.

In less than thirty years, Halloween transformed from a night of civil mischief to the suburban ritual enjoyed by so many each year. Those kids with bags filled with candy owe it all to pranksters who pushed cities to their limits.