Happy Halloween

[Anita]

(10-31-2014 07:41 PM)L Verge Wrote:  [quote='Eva Elisabeth' pid='40045' dateline='1414801687']
Thanks, Betty and Laurie - great links, especially #2! I hope I didn't overread this: what would the tricks have looked like in times before vandalism?

Good question! I don't know that I have ever seen any reference to early tricks before the 20th century.

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According to the White House Historical Assoc. Grover Cleveland who was born in 1837 "reportedly played Halloween pranks as a boy, rigging up a device to ring the school bell at midnight and removing garden gates at midnight."

From what I've read, "tricks" were played well before the custom of "trick or treating" which as Laurie mentioned "wasn't celebrated as we know it in the US until about the turn of the 20th Century".