I grew up with the concept of “Beggar’s Night” so I just kind of assumed it was a Thing everywhere, but I’ve been asking around and nobody seems to know what it is. I thought I might explain.
In Columbus, OH kids do not go trick-or-treating on 10/31. Instead, there is a separate date the week prior that is designated for trick-or-treating. It can vary by specific locality/suburb, but in general it avoids the weekends and Halloween itself.
For instance: Halloween falls on a Saturday this year. Beggar’s Night in my neighborhood is tonight (Thursday, 10/29).
I don’t know the origins, but I have strong suspicions that the intuition around this arrangement is to avoid having a bunch of mostly-unsupervised kids running around in the dark coinciding with a bunch of mostly-drunk adults driving around in the dark.
At any rate, it’s Beggar’s night…and we’ve actually had way more kids this year than I’d expected, all things considered. Imma go refill the pumpkin.
Happy Halloween, folks!