Chamblee54

Before Halloween became a costume holiday, people used to dress up on Thanksgiving. The custom of “masking” was practiced. It involved children, in costume, going door to door asking for treats.
Boing Boing has a quotable story on the custom. “Thanksgiving Maskers, what the heck’s that, you ask? Before Halloween became the holiday it now is in the United States, children would dress up in masks on the final Thursday in November and go door to door for treats (think: fruit!), or scramble for pennies. The tradition was known as Thanksgiving Masking. An excerpt from a New York Times article has details of the maskers’ hijinks — which included boys and men running around in women’s clothing. Some of them organized into a society known as “Fantastics.”
Not everyone thought masking was a good idea. “Progressive era reformers regarded child begging on Thanksgiving as immoral and thought children who engaged in it should be arrested. Why were parents not able to control their offspring? the New York Times in 1903 wanted to know. (30) The newspaper castigated parents who allowed children to demand treats or money as indecent.(31) The police tried to enforce a ban against begging. In response to complaints from the public, the clergy, school superintendents, and classroom teachers issued warnings. The New York Times in November of 1930 worried that demanding coins could teach children to become professional beggars and blackmailers and that children were annoying the public.(32) Begging, decided the paper, was a “malicious influence on the morals of children of the city. (33) Boys’ clubs and other child welfare agencies organized parades and costume contests as alternative activities. As a result of these efforts, child begging on Thanksgiving finally disappeared by the 1940s.(34) The tradition went back as far as 1780, involving crossdressing men who called themselves the Fantastics and paraded on the holiday. (from High Beam Research .
Pictures are from The Library of Congress .