Halloween Costumes Weren’t as Popular as Halloween Pranks
Halloween became a big holiday in the early 1900s. While Thanksgiving cornered the market on putting on costumes to go door-to-door for treats, Halloween was still a wild party time. The parties and festivities were just more contained than the free-roaming trick or treating. Adults celebrated along with the children, indulging in grand costume parties with snacks and food galore.
Halloween pranks were part of the fun, more so than any form of masking, guising, or mumming. But, as these things often do, it got wildly out of hand. Halloween became a night of chaos. Mailboxes were destroyed, fences torn apart, windows smashed, and vandalism galore. In Des Moines, Iowa, police logged around 500 calls about vandalism and damage.
