Cabbage Night and Other Names for Mischief Before Halloween

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

It’s Lisa Gould from Tabernacle, New Jersey.

Hey Lisa, glad to have you.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve been listening to your show and I’ve always wondered when where I grew up, which is northern New Jersey and a little town called New Melford.

The night before Halloween we called cabbage night and it was pretty much what we in South Jersey here call mischief night.

So it was you know, the night before Halloween was just as important ’cause you go out and you toilet paper and egg houses and do all freak all sorts sorts of havoc.

And I don’t know the origin of cabbage night.

But I don’t live in North Jersey anymore.

When I moved to South Jersey, they called the night before Halloween mischief night.

And so I just, you know, at that time I did look it up and it really seemed like it was northern New Jersey and I think one county in Connecticut.

But I never knew what the origin was.

And then I have to tell you I told my son that he’s out in Colorado now and they don’t even have mischief night.

So apparently we’re only mischievous in New England.

I mean in in northern in in the northeast is what I’m trying to say.

Yeah, that’s right.

Yeah.

A lot of these terms are very specific to the north northeast, although I know being from Missouri and living now in California, I can tell you that mischief around Halloween is still a thing.

In California they like to do it with fireworks, pretty much fi fireworks for every holiday.

Well that’s not good out there, is it?

No, it’s sure is.

Oh, It’s terrible.

But so just to be clear here, we’re talking about October thirtieth, the night before Halloween.

And I asked because s for historically sometimes cabbage night or mischief night has been either day, either Halloween itself or the day before.

Oh, well we were always the night before.

And although New Jerseyans like to think that cabbage night and mischief night are mostly there is they’re really, like you say, have historically been m more widespread threat.

New England, even parts of the upper Midwest around the Great Lakes.

You’ll definitely hear about Cabbage Night in parts of New York City.

So it’s it’s it’s water and you know what?

It goes back to the 1860s.

It’s just the term itself, all of the habit of the mischief is much older than that.

That’s got back into the mists of time.

But the cabbage night.

Why it’s called cabbage night?

Because people would throw cabbages at doors.

And not just any cabbages.

They would throw rotten cabbages or a variety known as a skunk cabbage, which can smell as bad as like rotten meat and other gross things.

Interesting.

So y you know, young men, they’ll do any kind of mischief they can get away with or even if they can’t they’ll still do it.

So they they throw it at the door kind of so you hear boom, boom, boom.

And of course you go to the door and you open up and there’s a pile of stinking cabbage.

Interesting.

Real pleasant.

Yeah.

So we’ve talked, Martha, we’ve talked about this before, but there besides mischief night and cabbage night, there are other terms for this.

Oh yeah, there’s beggar’s night in New Hampshire and and people playing ding dong ditch.

I guess that’s one of the things that’s done during yeah.

Devil’s night, goosey night, corn night, picket night, all of these are various terms for this.

Yeah, corn night involving throwing little kernels of corn, you know, just pelting the windows.

Yeah.

And then when you step out onto the porch it makes like a awkward crunch like you’re stepping on insects.

Well, good to know.

Yeah.

Not the only bad ones.

No, not at all.

New Jersey doesn’t deserve its reputation of of of being kind of naughty.

We appreciate it, Misa.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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