Kids dressing up in weird and exotic costumes and going door to door through the neighborhood, demanding treats. It's got to be Halloween, right? No, it's Thanksgiving.
Bain News Service: Thanksgiving Maskers, c. 1910-1915. [Bain Collection, Library of Congress. Click on any of the photos to see larger versions.]
Before Halloween became America's great holiday of tooth decay, the last Thursday in November was the time to for children and young adults to dress up and get into mischief. Thanksgiving masking is now an all-but-forgotten tradition, but it flourished in the US from as far back as the 1780s until the 1940s.
It's not clear where these strange and beautiful photos were made, but it's probably in one of the boroughs of New York City. While the Bain News Service (one of the nation's first news picture agencies) covered events all over the world, the city its special stomping ground.
Bain News Service: Thanksgiving Maskers, c. 1910-1915.
At the time these photos were made, Thanksgiving masking was a popular tradition. A New York Times article from a few years earlier reported that
Thanksgiving masquerading has never been more universal. Fantastically garbed youngsters and their elders were on every corner of the city. Not a few of the maskers and mummers wore disguises that were recognized as typifying a well-known character or myth. There were Fousts, Filipinos, Mephistos, Boers, Uncle Sams, John Bulls, Harlequins, bandits, sailors, [and] soldiers in khaki suits. ....In the poorer quarters a smear of burned cork and a dab of vermilion suffice for babbling celebrants.
Bain News Service: Thanksgiving Maskers, c. 1910-1915. [Remember, you can click on any photo to see a much larger image.]
Besides going door to door asking for treats, maskers -- the poor ones, I'd guess -- scrambled for pennies that were tossed to them. (You can see an example of this in the photo below.)
By the 1930s, guardians of public morality, such as the Times, churches, and social service agencies, had decided that Thanksgiving masking was a thoroughly bad thing. It would, they claimed, teach children to become professional beggars. Under pressure from a variety of sources, Thanksgiving masking disappeared in the 1940s.
Bain News Service: Thanksgiving Maskers, c. 1910-1915.
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A fine article at Boing Boing (which usually gets this kind of thing right) will tell you much more about Thanksgiving masking. You can read it, here.
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