- The origins of traditions are so cool.
Did you read Fall Traditions and Where They Came From: Part One? Because this is part two.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Macy’s Christmas Day parade started in 1924 and was created with the idea of publicly sharing the expansion of Macy’s Manhattan store. Because the parade was such a hit, it was switched to the Thanksgiving Dar parade and has been yearly since 1927.
Buy-Nothing Day
This is the opposite of Black Friday and you should do just was it says to celebrate or participate which is to say, you should buy nothing. It was founded by artist Ted Dave and the idea was 24 hours without buying anything and the first time it took place was in 1992 in Canada. In 1997 it was changed to directly counteract the craziness we know as Black Friday in the United States. (Or once did, as most shopping is online making Amazon Prime days more popular than Black Friday ever was.)
Tailgating
Some think the very first game that saw tailgating was the very first college game at Princeton played against Rutgers where people sat at the “tail end” of their horses to eat and drink. Then in 1904, people started to travel to games by train and after their long journey, enjoyed pre-game snacks before kickoff. And then there’s the Green Bay Packers theory from 1919 when fans backed their trucks right up to the end of the field as bleachers of sorts, where they had snacks and watched the game in tandem.
Pumpkin Spice
Pumpkin spiced everything is available to all those who are obsessed with pumpkin spice, which after all, is just cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and mace. It was 2003 when the PSL really got marketed and took off and consumers search out absolutely all the pumpkin-flavored treats for the season.
Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys Football on Thanksgiving
These NFL teams have played on the holiday since 1934 and it’s all because of the owner in Detroit who thought to have the game on Thanksgiving. NBC broadcast the game across 94 stations and it worked, filled the Lions stadium to capacity with fans being turned away at the gate. Dallas picked up on the marketing scheme in 1966 and their fans beat the attendance record. Since both teams have kept up with the tradition.
Homecoming
It’s not clear who really had the first homecoming but the University of Michigan and Illinois both date the tradition back to the early 1900s to encourage alumni to come back to visit.
Beggar’s Night
Halloween night can sometimes be seen as a night of increased vandalism and mischief and therefore some communities have been adapting a Beggar’s night, being that trick-or-treat is done on a different night in October. The idea dates back to 1938 in Des Moines, Iowa after petty crime took place. Because of bad weather, however, the city allowed kids to trick-or-treat on Halloween.
Haunted Houses
Haunted houses or the idea of purposely creating a place to creep someone out has been around since 19th-century London, when wax replicas of famous French people getting their heads chopped off by a guillotine were seen at the famous Madame Tussand. More of a walkthrough haunted house came about in 1969, “A lot of the professional haunters will point to one thing, and that’s Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. It’s the start of the haunted attraction industry,” Lisa Morton, the author of Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Copies and renditions have been popping up all over the country ever since.
Punkin Chunkin
There’s a world championship competition in Bridgeville, Delaware that’s the largest and oldest of it’s kind, being squashing pumpkins in all kinds of ways including using contraptions like catapults, centrifugal machines, and trebuchets.
So what do you think of this list of fall traditions? Or tell us about your own in the comments!