Written by: Siryet Bekele
Thanksgiving is a time of celebration, time of thanks, and time of family. But did you know that an outlandish tradition used to occur in America? In the 19thcentury, American Thanksgiving had a tradition that was strangely related to Halloween.
An odd tradition that began in New York soon traveled to the rest of America. On Thanksgiving Day, children would dress up in a costume and ask for treats such as candy and money. Sounds a lot like a spooky holiday that we celebrate now, doesn’t it? Unlike modern Halloween though, these children would dress ‘down’ in poor people's clothes, replicating beggars in New York with rags and exaggerated imitations and pleas.
The practice became so widespread and frequent that Thanksgiving was nicknamed “Ragamuffin Day.” Unfortunately, everything must come to an end. In the 1930s, the begging was replaced with Ragamuffin parades as a predecessor of Thanksgiving parades. After the Great Depression, Halloween became popular and Ragamuffin events became unusual. That didn’t seem to stop the children though; they continued the traditions into the 1940s.
Even New York Timespublished several articles to end the tradition, writing that children would ‘annoy’ adults with their maddening requests. By 1937, Ragamuffin events were almost gone. Many organizations held Thanksgiving Day parades to discourage Ragamuffins, sometimes featuring children dressed in Halloween costumes or as beggars. The last recorded Thanksgiving-Ragamuffin Day parade was in 1956, overshadowed by Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Now Ragamuffin parades are only on the outskirts of New York such as Bay Ridge after losing popularity in Manhattan. In September 2016, a street in Bay Ridge was renamed “Ragamuffin Way” in honor of the neighborhood’s 50-year-old tradition. Thanksgiving is still a time of family and food but now you know about its peculiar past and why adults say, “You ragamuffin!”