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How Allhallowtide's Hallowed Evening Souling Led to Reckless Pranks and “Mischief" or “Devil's Night," put the “Trick" in “Trick-or-Treating," & gave birth to the Halloween Party
How Allhallowtide's Hallowed Evening Souling Led to Reckless Pranks and “Mischief" or “Devil's Night," put the “Trick" in “Trick-or-Treating," & gave birth to the Halloween Party
When you come to Hallowfolk's ® A Folk Hallowen Experience®, you'll play party games and learn about Halloween Party traditions, and the Keeper of the Traditions or their assistants will explain these events to you in more detail. Trust us, it's way better experienced through immersive living history improvised theatre!
It's the blending of those cultural traditions from the ancient Celts and Roman influence in the British Isles in Samhain that created the Hallowed Eve of the Catholic Church's triduum (three day festival) of AllHallowtide or Hallowtide (All Hallows Eve: 10/31, All Saint's Day: 11/1, All Souls Day: 11/2) that the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants carried to the New World.
In fact, it was the tradition of souling on Hallow's Eve, the night before Hallowmas began each fall, when medieval through modern Europeans would collect alms for the poor in soul cakes, coin, nuts, and fruit (traditionally, apples) for the upcoming 11/2 All Souls Day in which Catholics would pray for the souls of those stuck in Purgatory (the dead whose souls were not in a sacramental state of grace at the time of their deaths) and provide Christian charity for the support the living poor—a living sacrifice replacing the animal sacrifices of old to win favor with Crom to bless the harvest.
Christians would exercise their Christian charity to the poor by collecting these alms on Hallow's Eve, which would be distributed by the parish church later to the poor. They collected them by going door to door wearing costumes and masked (thus a survival of Samhain's 'guising despite the church's best efforts to eradicate it), asking for alms or else threatening to perform pranks or tricks, hence the trick in trick-or-treat.
The morning after Mischief Night (Halloween itself) is a time to assess the pranks, in this case a yard studded with “For Sale” signs in Philadelphia in 1970. COURTESY THE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES. PHILADELPHIA, PA Credit: Atlas Obscura: Why Is Mischief Night Different From All Other Nights?
In fact, it was the ruthless pranks carried out by teenagers against miserly people who would not give alms to the poor on Halloween that evolved from Celtic 'guising to Roman Catholic souling to Irish/Scottish/Welsh Catholic souling while 'guising then to American trick-or-treating that led to the Halloween Party. The heyday of the Halloween Party in American history extends largely from the Victorian Era through mid-century of the 20th Century (~1820-1970s).
Isn't it strange that the religious collection of alms for feeding the poor with a threatened prank to those too stingy to give became commercialized and secularized over the centuries into youth going door to door demanding candy for their own selfish consumption, holding them hostage by an ever-worsening threat of property damage if not heeded?
That's why Hallowfolk® exists. We need a do-over because Halloween's commercialization has robbed Halloween of its soul and all of its meaning, and with your help as fellow Hallowfolk®, we can put the soul back into Halloween.
Adults now endeavored to keep adolescents out of trouble by giving them something more constructive and entertaining to do on Halloweven. These adults delved into their heritage and Halloween history and then rediscovered their heritage traditions: Celtic, Roman, and Roman Catholic. As they did so, they designed party games and activities that honored their ancestors' customs in which they could amuse and entertain teenagers. More importantly, they could brilliantly enlist the help of older siblings most likely to get caught up in the night's mischief in occupying them in the creative design and execution of fun experiences for younger siblings or neighborhood youth, and thereby extinguish all the mischief on Mischief Night.
Thus, those fortune-telling games and activities at Halloween Parties in the British Isles and America during this era were not in any way remotely sinister or dark. They simply paid homage to the harmless fun and heritage of our ancestors. Consequently, all over the British Isles and America, Catholic and Protestant Christian families hosted Halloween harvest festivals and parties to minimize all the mischief on Mischief Night.
The pranks carried out by adolescents on Halloween as the centuries marched on became ever less innocent. This was true especially in America where the descendants of the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants continued the 'guising of Celtic Samhain and 'souling of Catholic Allhallowtide. Their trick-or-treating got increasingly bold as mild vandalism got increasingly out of hand. These pranks had begun with: egging; toilet papering trees and shrubs or homes; soaping or waxing windows and doors; disassembling gates and pulling pins on hinges on doors; overturning wagons; disassembling cars overnight (in the early 20th Century); releasing livestock from coops, barns and stables; and leaving rotten vegetables or flaming bags of canine feces on stoops by the 1930s-1970s. The pranks of the youthful revelers wreaking havoc and mayhem in almost every community in America led to Halloween taking on the nickname Mischief Night (another name for Halloween also long forgotten). The 1899 Carbon County Journal (Wyoming) recorded:
“ The boys—and some girls—played the usual Hallowe'en tricks on Tuesday night, carrying away gates, overturning outhouses and raising a merry disturbance all around. The sufferers from these pranks took it as a matter of course, and quietly hunted up their property again on Wednesday."
Barely a decade later, The Rawlins Republican (Wyoming) reported on Thursday, November 2, 1911 that:
“Hallow’een, with its fun as was the malicious destruction of property has passed, and the citizens are still busy washing their windows and gathering their widely separated belongings.
The youngsters began the observance of the event on Monday night and indulged in many pranks on that evening. The main source of amusement seemed to be the promiscuous decorating of windows with soap. A bunch of the younger boys and girls, however, not satisfied with such innocent stunts thought that they would have some additional sport, so they all gathered around the school house and began throwing stones at the building. Before they desisted they had broken in all, 27 windows which means $75.00. Such “fun” as this is something that cannot be countenanced even on Hallow’een and the offenders are liable to find themselves in serious trouble before the affair has blown over as the officers are endeavoring to ascertain the names of the youngsters in the crowd. This is the only case of the malicious destruction of property that has been brought to our notice. Tuesday evening was the night that every young person as well as several of the older ones seemed to be bent on doing all the mischief possible. A monument with one of the Tierney Sheep Co. sheep wagons as a base was erected at the intersection of Cedar and Fourth streets. Wagons of all descriptions, scrapers, signs, and various other things were used in the erection of this monument.
It is reported that one of our prominent physicians was called out of bed well in the evening to tend a sick child who wasn’t sick at all. One of our jeweler’s was called up by phone and informed that the window of his store had been broken and in consequence hied down to look after his stock. He was seen going home a few minutes later muttering “stung” to himself.
A bunch of thirty or forty of the young ladies almost carried off the honors of the evening. When accosted by one of the special officers they secured a rope and the fact that said officer was not tied to a telephone post was solely due to his good judgment and fleetness of foot.
Although many of the youngsters wish that this festival of All Saints came oftener than once a year the older folks on the morning after might be heard having a sigh of relief and thanking fortune that Hallow’een comes but once a year."
Like teenagers trying to outdo each succeeding senior class's senior pranks, these mischief-makers led by the 1960s to the eventual Devil's Night celebrated on the evening October 30th, the night before Halloween (as if one night of mischief wasn't enough) that started in Philadelphia, and then spread to several cities in the Midwest.
Detroit, MI, became the epicenter of Devil's Night with far more serious arson, vandalism, property destruction, and looting from the 1960s-1990s (leading to its centrality to the late Brandon Lee's box-office smash The Crow, the Detroit's community response on the eve of October 30's Angel's Night, and a brief revival of Halloween Parties and festivals resurrecting the Victorian customs and traditions in the 1990s).
Thus, the apple pentagram in our original logo is a symbol for the origin of Trick-or-Treating today (with mask-wearing hailing from the ancient Celts of course) as apples like nuts, coins, and soulcakes (hello dumb supper) were very common fare for Christian souling collections to support the living poor and morphed into trick-or-treating and Mischief Night.
Mischief Night then itself created the exigency for the bundling of fortune-telling, games, and demonstration of the more ancient customs at parties designed by the adults in order to keep youth out of trouble instead of engaging in delinquent rites of passage. Thus, the apple superimposed on the moon in our original logo also alludes to souling, trick-or-treating, Mischief Night, and the Halloween Party and all the lost and forgotten traditions that they eventuated in. Help us put the soul back in All Souls Day and Halloweven by restoring the Christian charity that embodied this season by becoming Hallowfolk®.
It's also for these reasons that during the Victorian Era that Christian reformers derided Mischief Night as “the devil's holiday" so that it began to fall out of favor by the early 20th Century, possibly explaining why so many of our Hallow's Eve traditions were extinguished over time and are now forgotten. We've forgotten our history, and for a great many of us, we never learned it to begin with...
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