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player ready...Historical images abound of artfully costumed people of all ages in Highland Park for all sorts of parties, pageants, plays at school, at Ravinia.
The list is long. Pictures of Halloween trick-or-treaters are less plentiful.
The first documented use of “trick-or-treating” comes from Canada in 1927. All Hallow’s Eve roots and fibers twist and tangle as might any tradition that survives millennia.
Although the Halloween of costumed trick-or-treating that Highland Parkers will witness next week is derived from a Celtic celebration that involved apples, costumes, going door-to-door, jack-o-lanterns, and spirits and fairies, it is decidedly a later 20th century innovation.
Early Highland Park organizations and schools held Halloween parties and events, often with a decidedly preventative character. At the turn of the century, Nov. 1 morning papers frequently described pranks gone awry and lists of arrests and destruction, with no small number at college campuses. That was somewhat dissimilar from the cheery descriptions in women’s magazines like Godeys of “burned nuts and apples” or recitations of Robert Burns’ 1759 poem.
As the 20th century progressed, Halloween party descriptions include a variety of synonyms for “diversion.” The front page of the Oct. 26, 1922 Highland Park Press announces two Halloween events on its front page. A newly formed Boys Club at the Community Center describes the planning and lists committee members.
The article continues, “It is the expectation that … a large number of boys will be induced to spend the evening in legitimate amusement and perhaps thereby the usual Hallowe’en practices may be changed into less objectionable activities.”
Paging down, “Plans are underway for a jolly Hallowe’en masquerade at Deerfield-Shields High School (the current Highland Park High School).”
The next week’s issue describes the Highland Park Elks Club Halloween dance as a success.
More tellingly, the Nov. 1, 1922 baiduhai noted that the high school’s party may have been a diversion as the previous Halloween some anonymous volunteers had “painted” Deerfield-Shields Principal Richard L Sandwick’s house.
Nancy Webster is the archivist for the Highland Park Historical Society.