Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past [Hardcover]

Diane Arkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2004

Recipes, games, costumes, party ideas, and decorations, along with excerpts from vintage periodicals, show the gaiety that epitomized historic Halloween celebrations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"October, the golden month, when Nature having reaped a wonder harvest of beauty, wastes it like a spendthrift for our joy! What hostess can fail of success in entertaining this month when there are autumn leaves, flowers, 'golden glorious,' and vines flushing with crimson, to bedeck the table?" --The Housekeeper, October 1910 For late-October revelers, Halloween has traditionally been filled with surprise. Contemporary readers, though, might be amazed to discover how vastly differently this popular holiday was celebrated in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Halloween observances staged between the late 1870s and the early 1930s--a period often referred to as the holiday's "Golden Age"--routinely boasted decorations gleaned from nature, clever homemade party favors, winsome (not gruesome) masquerade attire, and intriguing old, old-fashioned games that were often designed to divine the identity of one's future mate. Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past offers a fascinating glimpse at material from a vast assortment of the vintage party guides and magazines that guided intrepid hostesses in their quests to stage parties worthy of the holiday's reputation for mystery and fun. Filled with illustrations and mementos, Halloween Merrymaking pays splendid tribute to the imaginative festivities of yesteryear.

From the Back Cover

"A unique window on American culture and a treasure trove of ideas for planning an old-fashioned celebration of your own." --Victorian Decorating & Lifestyle "Sure to be remembered as one of the most surprising and delightful additions to holiday books in a long time." --Tampa Tribune "Author Diane Arkins has collected old-fashioned poems and prose, vivid images, and fanciful illustration to recreate a holiday based on the joy of the harvest. If you love Halloween, you'll love this." --Country Collectibles Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past offers fascinating material from vintage party guides and magazines that guided hostesses in their quests to stage parties worthy of the holiday's reputation for mystery and fun. Filled with illustrations and mementos, this book pays splendid tribute to the imaginative festivities of yesteryear.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing (September 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158980113X
• ISBN-13: 978-1589801134
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mostly-charming treat...just one trick., October 5, 2004

By 

THEATRIX (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past (Hardcover)

I awaited the release of this book with keen anticipation, and overall, find it a delightful retrospective of Halloween celebrations of days gone by. The excerpts from vintage magazines and party guides are charming. My chief complaint lies with the design and treatment of the visuals in the book - they are painfully small. At such a reduced size, they don't allow the reader to fully appreciate the charm of the vintage advertisements, postcards, invitations and photos of costumed revelers.

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A VINTAGE LOOK AT HALLOWEEN, June 6, 2005

By 

Tim Janson (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past (Hardcover)

We Americans tend to be somewhat near-sighted in our view of Halloween in thinking that our celebration of the day is relatively a modern fascination. And, in truth, Halloween has boomed in the past twenty years to become second only to Christmas in decorating and celebrating the season. As Diane C. Arkins shows in this wonderful book, however, Halloween has been widely celebrated for well over one hundred years and this book concentrates on what Arkins calls Halloween's golden age from the 1870's to the 1930's. The book is filled with hundreds of vintage photographs, illustrations, and magazine reprints from the period.

Halloween was not the ghoulish, gory holiday that it is today, but rather a day of revelry when people would hold parties for adults as well as children. Throughout the book writers of the times dispense advice, squarely aimed at women, on how to throw a successful Halloween party. We begin with invitations with some classic examples of period artwork depicting pumpkins, witches or black cats. Showing far more thought, as well as sophistication, magazines even gave advice on what to write, often favoring catchy little rhymes.

Halloween decorations became widely available during the 1910's and Halloween Merrymaking presents hundreds of photographs depicting these vintage decorations. Illustrations and photos show various themes of the times. Interestingly, many of these decorations are being recaptured these days by modern crafters. The fantastic crepe` paper and paper Mache decorations are a collectors dream!

Party favors presented to children or adults were staples of Halloween get-togethers in the golden age. A popular idea of the 20's and 30's was "Jack Horner Pies" in which a centerpiece stood in the middle of the table with ribbons pulled to the end of the table, separating it into wedges, one for each guest. Within each wedge the hostess places small gifts or party favors such as fortunes, written in milk on paper so they would be invisible until held under a light, The fortune would hen be placed inside a walnut shell.

The magazines of the era also offered advice on what to serve for your party and included such forgotten delicacies as Little Goblin Stuffed Eggs and Moon Sandwiches. The book even provides sample menus for different types of parties such as formal, informal, or children's. Next up is the entertainment with suggestions on music and dances and games, as well as advice on costumes. During the 20's and 30's occultism was extremely popular and the book offers numerous fortune-telling and divination games that people could play at their parties.

Finally Arkins reprints several full, vintage articles on Halloween from magazines such as Woman's Home Companion, Woman's World, and Ladies Home Journal. You really get a sense after reading the book just how much Halloween was enjoyed back then without the rampant commercialism of today. This is a nostalgic walk back in time to an era of simplicity and fun. It's fun and educational to see how our grandparents and great-grandparents may have celebrated Halloween decades ago. Highly recommended!

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Day To You, Sweet Autumn: So Gently You Appear, September 29, 2004

By 

J. E. Barnes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past (Hardcover)

Diane C. Arkins' Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past (2004) offers a poignant but hopeful glimpse back into American high culture and the "Golden Age of American Halloween," which the author locates between 1870 and the early 1930s. Today, many deny that such a high culture ever existed in this country, or, if willing to make such an admission, will tar that culture as "elitist" and "oppressive."
Yet, at present, Americans everywhere crave a richer, more substantial, and refined existence than the mediocre model that the current popular culture promotes and sustains. Halloween Merrymaking looks back on a time when neighborhood and community, good manners and retail integrity, decorum and propriety, dress and composure, breeding and ingenuity, were all essential and unavoidable aspects of daily American life. Such cultural elements certainly represented strictures in some cases, but the rewards for such discipline was enormous: a thriving, evolving, positivistic, and multi - tiered society that strove to refine and improve itself in any number of ways.

Stressing above all that Halloween in the Golden Age was "hardly a monster's ball by any stretch of the imagination," Arkins focuses on the holiday as it was celebrated in magazines and periodicals of the era, which subtly dictated the civilized manner in which this most anarchic of American holidays was enjoyed by parents and children alike, whether at family gatherings, church socials, classroom frolics, bridge parties, or comparatively chic adult soirees. While children's party treats include the expected cakes, donuts, and candies brightly wrapped in autumn colors, a typical adult menu unselfconsciously suggests Oyster Canapes, Lobster Bisque, Waldorf Salad, and Broiled Squab.

Though the preface states that Halloween Merrymaking is not a "how - to manual" in the traditional sense, the book has sections lovingly devoted to "old fashioned" invitations, interior and exterior decoration, party favors, preparation of the party table, menus, costuming, appropriate music, and suitable games such as apple bobbing, nutshell auguries, tea leaf divination, and other forms of fun and fortune telling that have long roots in British history and folklore.

Though the finest commercial Halloween decorations, party favors, and costumes of the period are featured and emphasized, there are also numerous suggestions for making comparable items from orange, black, and white crepe paper and cardboard, standard kitchen vegetables, and other readily available materials. Ingenuity, enthusiasm, and a happy "can do" attitude are underscored throughout. America was largely an agricultural society at this time, a fact the book reflects in a number of meaningful and practical ways.

Halloween Merrymaking includes period photographs of parties and costumed partygoers, magazine covers and entire magazine articles (such as 1906's "A Jolly Forest Halloween" and 1909's "Under The Pumpkin Vine At Halloween"), and a wide variety of imaginatively depicted period reproductions of witches, jack o' lanterns, black cats, ghosts, harvest moons, owls, and fairies.

Highly recommended to those seeking inspiration and a cure for cynicism, apathy, and the present third - rate norm.