Here we are between Halloween and Thanksgiving. And so you’re probably thinking…Ragamuffins!

No? Well you probably would if you had grown up Irish, in New York, at the turn of the 20th century. In those days, when there were lots of newly-arrived poor Irish immigrants, a lot of kids decided the best day to go begging for treats might just be Thanksgiving morning. They would dress up in sloppy clothes and paint their faces – it was quite common for young boys to dress up in mom’s clothing and makeup – and go knocking on neighborhood doors, yelling “treats for Thanksgiving!” After which they might start beg-crawling from pub to pub.

It was a common tradition. In her 1943 novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, author Betty Smith recalls Ragamuffin Day, when her character Francie Nolan buys a “yellow Chinaman mask with a sleazy rope mandarin mustache.” Her brother Neely wears one of his mother’s old dresses with “stuffed wadded newspapers in the front to make an enormous bust.” The streets are “jammed with masked and costumed children making a deafening din with their penny tin horns.” Some storekeepers lock their doors to keep the noisy panhandlers out while others unleash “profane lectures on the evils of begging.”

In a letter written to the New York Times in 1995, Jim Tierney wrote, “On Thanksgiving we dressed as Ragamuffins — three Irish-American kids — and went from backyard to backyard, pub to pub, looking for handouts. But with a difference. We played Irish traditional music on the fiddle and flute and sang and danced to it. We sometimes earned $45 for the day. The best money was made playing ‘The Stack of Barley’ and singing ‘A Nation Once Again.'”

Things could get out of hand. At night kids commonly dressed as Native Americans, blackened their faces with soot, and sometimes got into gang brawls. In 1906 and 1907 there were reports of gunfire. The Times declared the whole event to be “a plague.” Soon the police and the schools were working together to shut down Ragamuffin Day.

The event lived on for a few decades more. But with the coming of the Great Depression, and the impoverishment of the entire nation, little beggars just didn’t seem so cute anymore. And with the rise in popularity of trick or treating on Halloween – also a largely Irish invention – the boisterous energy of Ragamuffin Day was channeled into a more socially acceptable event.

But the flames of those bonfires haven’t entirely gone out. These days, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the Ragamuffin Parade – begun as a one-block affair in 1966 – has grown to be the largest event of the year. It’s a completely tame and juvenile affair, with the little kids having their costumes judged at the Holy Angels Catholic Academy – winners usually receive a bike – before they all march about 15 blocks to an ensuing street fair.

Curiously, this year’s parade honorees are the two owners of Cebu, a local restaurant, named Ted Mann and Michael Esposito. Not long ago, the local Brooklyn newspapers reported that Mr. Mann, who had been adopted as a kid, was unexpectedly reconnected with his biological father. Who turned out to be none other than rocker-turned-gun-toting-wingnut Ted Nugent!

Thankfully, dad did not attend the event. Gunfire did not ensue. And the 2018 Bay Ridge Ragamuffin Parade passed joyfully without incident.