What we today call Halloween was once known as All Hallows’ Eve, and even as recently as the years of my youth, was spelled Hallowe’en – the apostrophe indicating that it was a contraction of the word “evening.” At that time, I was vaguely aware that the holiday originally had something to do with spirits of dead ancestors, dark autumn evenings and lanterns made from hollowed-out turnips. Bonfires were intended to frighten away evil spirits and other scary things.
Somehow, all that had something to do with tales my dad told of Halloweens of his youth in Wisconsin, where autumn nights were colder than we have here at this time of year, and pranks were closer to vandalism than the things my sisters and I did to mark this hedonistic holiday. Dad told of tipping over outhouses, releasing farm animals from barns and pens, taking the wheels off farm carts and wagons and leading a cow up two flights of stairs to leave her in the bell tower of the town schoolhouse. He admitted that it was much more difficult to lead the cow down the stairs than it had been to lead her up.
Costumes, in my parents’ day, were more a matter of disguises or emulating some of the supposed evil spirits from those long-ago observances than they were of masquerading as witches, tramps, gypsies, or gangsters. I don’t remember ever having a costume that came ready-made from the store. We did, sometimes buy simple masks of the Lone Ranger style, or one of a few full-face masks available that depicted ghosts, devils, witches or skulls. Those were made of heavily starched thin fabric which absorbed moisture from our breath and became limp and soggy after about twenty minutes of wear. Since our costumes were usually concocted, at the last minute, from whatever things we could dig out of attic, basement and closets, masks seldom had much relationship to the rest of the disguises we assembled.
What we did, as we ran about on those dark nights in our home-made costumes, was nothing like my children’s tame Trick-or-Treat activities. We left our house armed with pieces of soap snitched from the bathroom, and noisemakers, both purchased and homemade. Nearly every year, I made a simple little gadget from an empty wooden spool saved from my mother’s sewing basket. It took only a few minutes to notch the edges of the rims with a paring knife, wind a yard of string around the spool and insert a pencil through its center. Thus armed, I’d sneak up to a darkened window of somebody’s house, smear the window pane with my scrap of soap, then holding the spool by its pencil handle, I’d press it against the window and pull the string to unwind it and send the spool spinning and clattering against the window. Then, of course, we’d run to a safe distance and watch to see if anyone came to investigate the mysterious clatter and see the soapy scribble on their once-clean window pane. If people were foolish enough to leave outdoor furniture or potted plants on the porch or lawn, we of course were obligated to tip them over or haul them off to the neighbor’s yard. Any laundry left on clotheslines had to be taken down and draped over bushes or tree limbs, and garbage can lids shoved out of reach on garage roofs.
The notion of Beggars Night was never a part of our Halloween. That, according to legend, was to take place the night before Halloween, when potential victims bribed the vandals with treats so that they would not commit mayhem the next night. We never considered that route – soaping windows and
playing annoying pranks was what it was all about during those years. I was introduced to Beggars’ Night during the first year after our marriage when we had just moved to a neighborhood in Iowa City.
There was a knock at the door, we turned on the porch light and saw a small princess, a smaller ghost and slightly taller Superman standing there holding out paper bags, expecting treats. We were totally unprepared. My husband gave them each a nickel.