A Traditional Halloween Celebration
Posted on July 7, 2007 - Filed Under Articles
This vintage article from 1922 describes an old-fashioned family gathering.
Halloween is a party occasion. It is a special night on the children’s calendar. You sigh and say to yourself that every day is a special day for them, and parties for children mean hard work for adults.
Quite so. But the home parties are the things one must cling to as to the house of his fathers. The holiday frolics, each with its special observances, store up memories and ties that hold as nothing else can ever do.
So for Halloween there must be a party for the child, and you can come along too. Children love the particular ceremonies, the rites, of the holiday. They like a certain repetition in their good times. They love the familiar things, the rich associations that make the heart of the feast.
I’m thinking of a Halloween party that I like. There is a wee clay goblin that has stood in the place of honor on the dining table of this family every Halloween for many, many years. The youngest child in the house places him there. Children have stood that faded old goblin in his place until it has become a treasured family relic.
The table is lighted by candles hidden in orange-colored Jack o’ Lanterns. There is a set of dinner plates, decorated with witches that are never used except upon this evening. They have come to stand for Halloween and the family reunion in the minds of the children.
The menu is always the same. Roast goose bursting its brown skin with sage and onion stuffing, boiled potatoes that seem to be powdered with snow so mealy are they, and yellow turnips mashed and piled high in a goose-shaped dish. And there is always velvety brown gravy to pour over all.
For dessert, nuts served in quaint wooden bowls that crossed the sea with the fathers and mothers of the family. There used to be queer little barrelshaped tumblers full of sparkling, golden cider to wash down the nuts.
After dinner the candles are blown out and wished on, the bright lights are turned on, and the frolics begin
There is a cake with a ring hidden in it for the bride to be, and a thimble for the spinster.
There is a plate of flour in the pantry. Hidden in it is a coin that the children try to find with their teeth.
Out in the flagged kitchen there is a tub fall of water with red apples bobbing about in it, and you try to get one with your teeth.
Somebody plays the piano, and everybody dances and sings until twenty minutes of twelve. Then the Sir Roger strikes up and the whole family, grand fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts, and all between, “stand up” to it.
The party is over. The faded wee goblin, the witches’ plates, the quaint little bowls are put away for another year until Halloween comes round again.
But the memories of it last and become family traditions. You know they are what make “home,” and “home” is a different place from any other on earth. It is where our hearts’ treasures lie.
Source: Child Training , Angelo Patri, 1922
