The two diaries had been in a box of other items I actually wanted at auction. I found them later while I was going through the box at home. One of the diaries was locked and the other was not. I flipped through the unlocked one, read a few entries and put them aside.
I didn’t feel inclined to read them fully. They told stories of the life of one girl in the 1930s, and from what I read, it wasn’t exactly exciting. Most girl’s diaries – no matter how important the scribblings may seem to them – are usually recordings of mundane occurrences.
These diaries belonged to one girl, Olga, who wrote her name in fountain pen in one and pencil in the other. The diaries covered the years 1930 to 1936 (and not necessarily in that order). One entry on her birthday in 1933 noted that she was 14 years old. She seemed to have lived in Philadelphia because she mentioned several familiar sites.
Since today is Halloween, I wondered what Olga’s Halloween was like and if she mentioned it in her diaries. Did she and her friends go trick or treating, knocking on doors for candy? Did she bake pumpkin pies with her mother?
Checking Oct. 31 in both diaries, I found very sparse entries. Halloween seemed to be just another day that didn’t much excite Olga. Here’s what she wrote for Oct 31, 1934:
“Today is Halloween. Got a fountain pen at last. At night we made a lovely Jack-o-Lantern from a pumpkin. Had a piano lesson.”
Oct. 31, 1935:
“Since it’s Halloween the family dressed up in crazy costumes and ducked for apples, etc.”
Maybe there wasn’t a big fuss over Halloween in the 1930s, especially since the country was in the midst of a Depression and eating was a lot more important than frolicking.
A decade earlier, Halloween was celebrated with pranks orchestrated by young people, and by the start of the Depression it had evolved into vandalism and violence.
Police in Baltimore in 1930 tried to stem criminality at the annual costume parade by banning masks so criminals in the crowd couldn’t hide behind them. The ban included masks of “clowns, harlequins, columbines (harlequin’s mistress), cowboys, Colonial Dames, Mexicans, spooks, skeletons, soldiers, sailors and marines.”
Celebrants started a week early with their mischief, so much so that some nights got their own names: Doorbell Night, Chalk Night, Mischief Night and Moving Night. Balancing milk bottles on a door knob and then knocking on a homeowner’s door seemed to be a favorite pastime. Not everyone celebrated in the streets; some folks apparently had parties at home.
New York City welcomed skaters to Central Park for costume contests, as seen in these 1930s posters. Despite the hardships, the Depression didn’t seem to mar people’s need to dress up and have fun.
The act of knocking on doors and expecting treats didn’t start to take root until the late 1930s and early 1940s, and went national in the late 1940s. Kids didn’t get candy, though. They got “coins, nuts, fruit, cookies, cakes, and toys.” It would be the 1950s before candy nudged its way into Halloween and the 1970s before it took over as the blessed treat that it is today.
Most of the early costumes were hand-made and very simple, according to one site, with homemade princess dresses and tiaras, and oversized shirts stuffed with a pillow to resemble a hobo. Store-bought costumes seemed to have come into being in the 1930s. Quoting from a 1942 West Virginia newspaper article, the site noted that one store sold costumes resembling clowns, devils, gypsies, hobos, witches, ballet dancers and a bellhop attire based on a Philip Morris’ “Johnny the Bellboy” cigarette ad. There were also costumes deriding African Americans and other ethnic groups.
Olga’s simple Halloween at home may have been pretty commonplace. Since her entry for that day was so terse, I wondered if she had written anything about it in the days before. I didn’t find anything about Halloween, but I did read this entry that I found both timeless and amusing:
Sunday, Oct. 27, 1935:
“To-day mother asked me to help make waffles. I put flour into eggs instead of eggs into flour where upon Mother threw the whole bowl of batter at me, thus making this a typical Sunday.”
I guess she and her mom did not make pumpkin pies for Halloween.
