It Is Like A Carnival

rt VISITOR from the west o r Bonth, who shonld arrive in Brooklyn on the aftemoou of Tbanksgiving Day, would be start led, puzzled, and, perhaps, ïf of a very devout nature, somewhat horrified at the actions of the young people. He would meet processions of lads and children blowing on tin horns, beating cheap drums and wnooping as recklessly as so many yonng savages. Boys in masks and outre costunies would salutehini with "Gimmeapenny, mister." And he ïnight even see a squad of apparently well to do men marching in irregular order and conducting themselves like tramps. To sum it up in one sentence: Brooklyn alone, of all places in the United States, celebrates Thanksgiving Day as a heathen festival. And the custom is peculiarly local to Brooklyn. It has not even crossed in full strength to New York city, though some of its influenco is discernible there; and it is barely noticeable in the smaller cities and towns of Long Island. And what is stranger still, it is a very oíd local custom, and its origin is, as the historians of Ireland say, "lost in the mists of a hoary antiqnity." The phrase "heathen festival" in the preceding paragraph must not be construed as a term of reproach; it is simply meaut to imply a celebration like that of Christmas iu the west and south. And to explain theso variations of local custom, a bit of history is in order. As all classical scholars know, it is only by accident that somo sections of the Christian world observe Christmas as the anniversary of Christ's birth. The day was celebrated in Italy for a thousand years or more before the Christian era. It was the day of the sun's return from his most southern point in tho heavens, the day when the people closed accounts for the old year and started on a new one; so all rigid rules were relaxed, the most austere smiled on the general levity and it was a day of rout and revel, of mask and niery, of feasting and giving gifts and general social equality. Through all the changes of 2, i 500 years the oíd custom has survi ved ; and in more than half the Christian world today Christmas is practically a "heathen festival," celebrated just about as it was in ltaly 500 B. C, except that gunpowder has been invented and the turkey discovered since then. From southern Europe the custom floated unchanged to the southern belt of the United States, and from England to Virginia and the border states nortli and south; so, while New Englanders assembled in their churches for forenoon service on that day, the people of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and adjoining states were "firinganvils," popping firecrackers, drinking eggnog, shooting at a mark, having running and wrestling matches, pitching quoits, and getting ready for a big dinner of fresh pork, chicken and sausage, with whisky before it and plenty of "Jeemes river" tobáceo after it. Further south the sla ves were allowed unlimited license and revel, and no work was done till after New Year's. # Well, all that Christmas is to the boy of the southwest, all that July 4th is to all American boys, and a good deal that a school holiday is to most boys, that is Thanksgiving day to the boys of Brooklyn, in the afternoon. A gentleman spending his first winter in the city in 1887, said to me recently: "When I descended frorn the Greene avenue station of the elevated road at 2 p. m. I was amazed at being surrounded by a crowd of half-grown boys in masks and fanciful costumes who boldly demanded the gift of a penny eaeh and en my ref usal raised au infernal din with tin horns, bones and other intruments. At length I recoguizedthe voice of a son of one of my neighbor's, a wealthy man, and he asked me for a penny! I bought off the wbolesquad at apennyapiece, bul had not gone a square before I was surrounded by another squad, dressed in woman's ciothes, their faces daubed with paint, and they insisted on eseorting me home. And 80 it went on all the afternoon, first a squad of little hoodlums and then a procession of tall lads and young men ; and some of them actually knocked at the back doors and demanded gifts of pie and cold turkey. All the boys of the ward seemed to have turned hoodlums for the afternoon. And the parents said it was a necessity to havo a day occasionally to let off the savagery which is inherent in a boy and must work out some way. At uiglit there were blazing barrels and other bonfires on the corners, and little savages daubed witb. paint howling and dancing around them. To a western man who had only known tho day as a religious anniversary it was a queer experience." ## The origin of this curious local custom cannot bo traced. One old citizen thinks it was set up on Long Island by the French Huguenots, who had a dny of eral merriment at the season afterwards taken for Thanksgiving, and that the two morged in one by mere accident. Another "ventures to guess" that it was a Dutch custom, weü established before Brooklyn became an American city. Still another ispositive that the custom had its rise among the first Yankees who settled in Brooklyn, as a sort of jocular reaction from the austerity of the old New Engeland holy day. According to him, the interlock of church and state was so com plete in New England in the last century that a man had to be awfully solemn and religiously quiet all of Thanksgiving Day; the lighter hearted and liberal fled to Long Island and finding there so much more liberty than they had been accustomed to, grew quite hilarious over their new found freeaom and made the day a sort of white man's Emancipation Day. What was at first wild hilarity in them has become masking and merriment in their youthful descendants. There is a good deal in history to support this view. It is well known that the first churches on Long Island were largely built up by religious refugees from New England; and as the Puritans had rejected Christmas and May Day because the Church of England sanctioned some license on those days, so it is quite likely these exiled Yankees rejected the severer features of Thanksgiving Day because the Puritans had enforced them. Be the cause what it may, the fact is patent that while the forenoon is devoted to religión, the afternoon is a season for masking, mirth and mummery. And in Brooklyn alone, among American cities, do parents allow and even encourage vrild, boyish sports on Thanksgiving Day.