The city in the US where trick-or-treating will take place on Halloween this year for the first time since 1938
Over 80 years ago, one city banned Halloween for children after things got too out of control. But this year, youths will once again go out on Oct. 31.
Halloween has become a much more subdued affair than it was nearly a century ago. When Halloween became a thing in the United States there was much more interest in the ‘trick’ part of trick-or-treating.
By the 1930s it had gotten so out of control with vandalism, violence and looting that some cities thought about banning the holiday to stop the annual destruction explains History. One city essentially did just that when in 1938 “police answered 550 reports of vandalism involving pre-teens and teenagers soaping windows, sidelining streetcars, setting fires and throwing bricks through windows on Halloween.”
The city in the US where trick or treating will take place on Halloween this year for the first time since 1938
The city in question was Des Moines, Iowa. Kathryn Krieg of the Des Moines Playground Commission, to tamp down the mischief-making, created Beggars’ Night to be held on October 30.
While the adults and families could still celebrate Halloween on October 31, children were only allowed to go out the evening before and under adult supervision. And furthermore, in order to get a ‘treat’ they would be required to do a ‘trick’ but one from a list of suggestions. They included “a song, a poem, a stunt or a musical number, either solo or in group participation, is presented.”
The plan was a success and repeated the following year. In 1942, the promoters of Beggars’ Night used the war effort to help dissuade pranksters from causing mayhem with a headline in The Des Moines Register reading “Kids! -Don’t Help the Axis on Halloween.”
By the middle of the 1940s, police reports of mischief-making had dropped in half. Krieg kept issuing an annual bulletin until she retired in 1974. The Register keep up the practice for a few years more.
The annual substitute for Halloween in Des Moines has become a night for ghastly jokes instead of ghoulish pranks for most trick-or-treaters. Des Moines is unique in its trick-or-treating tradition of telling jokes, similar to those that you would read on the wrapper of Bazooka bubble gum, reports the Register. Experts on the holiday, while there are other alternate forms of pre-Halloween celebrations like Cabbage Night, had never heard of a similar way of getting a treat albeit a day early.
However, this year Beggars’ Night will be celebrated on October 31 and not the 30th. It is not that kids will be celebrating Halloween per say, it is a case of Beggars’ Night taking its place on October 31. This was due to severe weather forecasted for its traditional date on the eve of All Hallows’ Eve.