How did early homesteaders celebrate Halloween? Halloween started to become more popular in the mid-1800s. The Irish Potato Famine brought large numbers of Irish and Scottish immigrants. They brought with them old world traditions that mix with new world celebrations. This blending of cultures was unique to the Great Plains during the late-1800s and early-1900s as Irish, Scottish, German, and Welsh people come to claim free land. Additionally, new world migrants from the East Coast and from Latin and South America came to claim homesteads as well. New world traditions celebrated the harvest while old world traditions commemorated the dead and told stories of ghosts and spirits. Blend the two together and we get celebrations that encouraged eating bountiful meals followed by fortune telling and stories commemorating the dead. Secondly, Americans were introduced to a popular middle ages tradition from the countries of Great Britain known as Guising. Guising allowed poor people to go out for a night to beg for money. As the tradition evolved in the old world, people would carve open turnips and put candles in them to see as they would go around in dis-guise asking for cakes and money. This custom of disguising arrived in America and the Great Plains in the late-1800s. All sources show guising was a rural tradition; after a bad harvest or through the unfortunate circumstances of the poor in feudal Europe, farmers along with their wives and children would go beg for money and food. This resonated very deeply with the agricultural community of the Great Plains. Now for one last tradition: bootzamon, or as we like to call him, the Boogey Man!! It is a German custom to put out a bootzamon in the field around harvest time to scare away birds that would eat the grain. They called it a Boogey Man, while others called them Scarecrows. So, all of these threads became the fabric of Great Plains Halloweens. Scarecrows, in addition to scaring birds, would often mark the direction for a Halloween party. People began to carve elaborate faces out of pumpkins and use them as the head that would be lit brightly to show people where they were going in the dark of night and along the way, their children would guise! However you are celebrating, Happy Halloween!
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 20:33:24 +0000
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