Thanksgiving Maskers: 1911

I have a few church members that say they used to "go beggin", as they called it, in the fall (1940 era). They would dress up in old clothes and put on a mask they made out of a paper bag. They would knock on doors and would be invited inside. They would get food items such as cake and apple cider.

I thought it was just perhaps the beginning of trick-or-treating but they both said it was different. Perhaps it was Thanksgiving masking.

The little girl at the end looks like the spawn of Hannibal Lecter in that mask thing of hers!

I just wonder how many really old folks have remarked that they remember going Thanksgiving masking and nobody believed them, just winked at one another that the old guy or gal was obviously senile. I just wonder. Sadly.

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1940-1950s, we also had kids in homemade disguises, singing for pennies in yards behind the rows of five-story apartment houses. This was like a holdover from Halloween.