@McTag,
That could be, but then, the Easter Bunny is of fairly recent vintage. German immigration began to pick up in the latter half of the 19th century, and especially in the 20th century, particularly after the two world wars. After Prussia unified Germany, the German workers were the worst paid, poorest industrial workers in Europe. Small wonder they would emmigrate. With the growth in German immigration in the 20th century, by the end of that century, they had become the largest single immigrant group in U.S. history, but they only overtook the Irish late in the 20th century.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
By the way, i don't know why you keep mentioning the Germans.
the origin of all good things eh <stares>
@Walter Hinteler,
Not in the United States, Valter . . . we weren't hangin' out there in the late medieval . . .
David asks, "HOW is this accomplished?"
Is that a set-up line, David?
I ask, because it involves guns. Can't seem to have David on a thread without guns getting in there somehow, no matter the topic.
From wikipedia:
Quote: In the cider-producing West of England (primarily the counties of Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire) wassailing also refers to drinking (and singing) the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive.
An old rhyme goes: “Wassaile the trees, that they may beare / You many a Plum and many a Peare: / For more or lesse fruits they will bring, / As you do give them Wassailing.”
The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn.{"England In Particular", Common Ground 2007} The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will then be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in Wassail from the Clayen Cup as a gift to the tree spirits (and to show the fruits created the previous year). Then an incantation is usually recited such as
Here's to thee, old apple tree, That blooms well, bears well. Hats full, caps full, Three bushel bags full, An' all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah!
Then the assembled crowd will sing and shout and bang drums and pots & pans and generally make a terrible racket until the gunsmen give a great final volley through the branches to make sure the work is done and then off to the next orchard. Perhaps unbeknown to the general public, this ancient English tradition is still very much thriving today. The West Country is the most famous and largest cider producing region of the country and some of the most important wassails are held annually in Carhampton (Somerset) and Whimple (Devon), both on 17 January (old Twelfth Night).
Private readings about people in Somerset in the 1800s revealed that inhabitants of Somerset practised the old Wassailing Ceremony, singing the following lyrics after drinking the cider until they were "merry and gay:"
"Apple tree, apple tree, we all come to wassail thee, Bear this year and next year to bloom and to blow, Hat fulls, cap fulls, three cornered sack fills, Hip, Hip, Hip, hurrah, Holler biys, holler hurrah."[5]
@MontereyJack,
Yeah, my grandfather came from Devon in the 18OOs.
He coud be
MERRY, but
not gay.
maybe
cheerful sometimes
David
The symbolism of that particular ritual--the apple wassailing--seems a tad peculiar to me. You want your apple trees to be fruitful, so you mash their kids into pulp and then pour the resultant juice over their roots,then you pepper them with buckshot. This does not seem to be positive reinforcement from the tree's point of view.
I DO like Apple Cider.
David
@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
when I was a kid growing up outside of Detroit, we'd go "begging" on Halloween, and call out "Help the poor" rather than "trick or treat" to get the candy (the "poor" was us, not a starving kid in India). The only online mentions I see come from the Detroit area. Did anyone else somewhere else say "help the poor"? Any ideas why we might have?
In 1984, I went to India, at the behest of my dry cleaner.
Of course, I was beset with beggars.
I gave money to some of them (mostly to children); not to others, depending on what I felt like.
1 woman complained that the ones to whom I was giving were not poor enuf.
She objected: "the rich are giving to the rich!"
I 'm within my rights to give to whomever I choose.
David
@MontereyJack,
I grew up in the city of Detroit and we said the same thing! In fact, I was just talking about this to a friend yesterday. Don't know where the phrase came from. I was googling it to find out and ran across your post. Where and when did you live there? I grew up in the 50's and 60's. Lived on Indiana St. in the Northwest section of Detroit.
@McTag,
I grew up in Lincoln Park just outside Detroit and it was always "help The Poor" when we went out on Halloween. We had homemade costumes not storebought.
@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
when I was a kid growing up outside of Detroit, we'd go "begging" on Halloween, and call out "Help the poor" rather than "trick or treat" to get the candy (the "poor" was us, not a starving kid in India). The only online mentions I see come from the Detroit area. Did anyone else somewhere else say "help the poor"? Any ideas why we might have?
In my childhood, I dont think that anyone in our naborhoods was poor.
Such a representation wud be
implausible.
David
I would say "help the poor". That's ME.
Thanks to those who seem to happen upon this thread every year and revive it for awhile and add something new.
We're getting close to Halloween, and for the fifth year we're starting to get new hits, and it still seems like it was only around the Detroit area that kids said "Help the poor", and we still haven't pinned it down as to exactly why we did, except it's probably something from somebody's English ancestors, and the kids there today probably trick or treat like everybody else. Shame about that.
I grew up near Detroit in a prototypical bedroom community, near 15 Mile, in the 40s and 50s, and early on I got into folk music, from the old 33s my local library had, and I was enamored of the Folk Process, the way the traditional songs had survived for centuries, passed down generation to generation, from mother or father or grandmother or aunt or uncle, to their relative's kids, and passed from them to the next generation, and now I find I was part of the folk process every Halloween, but it apparently ended with us. TV got the better of us.
Speaking of TV, have you seen the Verizon Halloween commercial this year, which is kinda cute. Mom, dad, and kid are out trick-or-treating (presumably), in extremely elaborate alien monster costumes. The kid, maybe 8 or 9, is getting texts and video clips from his friends on his (presumably Verizon) phone, and says to the parents something like, "Hey, dudes, we've gotta stay away from 32 Elm Street--the guy is a dentist and he's giving out [deep disgust in his voice] FLOSS!"
"Wierdo" mutters the dad.
claude buchanan says:
Quote: We had homemade costumes not storebought.
we had homemade costumes too, I'm not sure if there were many storebought ones then. We vacationed in New Mexico, and my dad made us a Thunderbird costume, with the wings and body out of yellow, red, and black painted oilcloth and the head out of an oilcloth covered old oval wastebasket, with some sort of beak attached. It was pretty spectacular and exotic, in Michigan terms, and I wore it a couple years in the town parade to a bonfire on Halloween proper, until I aged out and passed it down to my sister, who passed it down to my younger brother. We wore simpler costumes begging the night before.
On the same idea as this:
but simpler and Southwestern, rather than Northwest Coast, and with a head that was originally a wastebasket.
or this (but no turquoise)
@MontereyJack,
I grew up in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit and we said "help the poor". I've been asking all my friends in the NYC area and no one has ever heard of that. So it must be a Detroit / Michigan thing.
@MontereyJack,
YES!!! I grew up on the northeast side of Detroit and always said Help the Poor. I never said Trick or Treat and when I ask people today, they look at me like, "WHAT?" Thank you for someone else knowing this!
I grew up in Detroit and we went "begging " in the 50's. Shouting help the poor in our homemade outfits. I always was a cowboy with soot from our paper burning unit in basement for my makeup . Not much recycling going on except for "paper drives". I digress. With our homemade costumes and pillowcases for the goods & went out and begged help the poor. Never cutting across lawns. And always saying thank you. Never knew trick or treat as a greeting till I started teaching in early 70's
