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Pinkster: The Freedom Celebration
Originally a Dutch religious holiday for Pentecost, Pinkster transformed into something truly remarkable in colonial America – an African-American celebration that defied the brutal reality of slavery. In Albany, the festival was presided over by King Charles, an Angola-born captive of the Mayor who became a legendary figure – tall, handsome, an athletic dancer and gifted speaker who directed the elaborate celebrations. The style of dance and complex layering of contrasting rhythms by drummers and clappers testified to the survival and retention of West African traditions. Between 1811 and 1813, despite or perhaps because of its popularity, the city of Albany passed an ordinance banning the drinking and dancing associated with Pinkster. The holiday afforded enslaved Africans the opportunity to reunite with loved ones who often lived some distance away, with many journeying from rural areas into New York City. Think of it as an underground railroad of culture, carrying African heritage through the darkest period of American history.
Election Day: When Puritans Partied
Election Day was actually one of the four important secular holidays the Puritans celebrated, along with Commencement Day, Thanksgiving and Training Day. From the earliest New England settlements, colonial elections were public feast days where people put on their best clothes and paraded into town, sitting for the Election Day sermon among the most important religious events of the year. From Colonial times until the early 1800s, it included parades, banquets, and dancing until dawn – it was time for Puritan Connecticut, which did not celebrate Christmas or Easter, to let loose and have fun. Through the Revolutionary period, the tradition evolved into more lavish public affairs where voters could expect barbecue, cake and rum punch, with George Washington providing 158 gallons of alcohol to voters during one Virginia election. Election Day began to lose its prominence by the early 1800s due to the unwillingness of the General Assembly to continue footing the bills and the rise of other holidays such as Christmas and the Fourth of July.
Ragamuffin Day: America’s First Halloween
Before Halloween became the holiday known for dressing up in costume and begging for candy, children in NYC participated in Ragamuffin Day on Thanksgiving, dressing as rags and oversized parodies of beggars asking “Anything for Thanksgiving?” Ragamuffin Day formed around 1870, involving children going door to door asking for candy or money, originally dressed in the style of the homeless of New York with rags and oversized imitations of beggars. By the arrival of the Great Depression in 1929, with many genuinely reduced to begging to survive, the jovial activities of dressing up as a poor person and begging for treats was no longer a novelty but instead a harsh mockery. By 1930, articles appeared in The New York Times calling for an end to the practice, with Superintendent of Schools William J. O’Shea stating that “modernity is incompatible with the custom of children to masquerade and annoy adults on Thanksgiving day”. The Macy’s parade was enough of a success to push Ragamuffin Day into obscurity, as the public backlash against begging during the Great Depression led to promotion of alternatives including Macy’s parade.
The Mummers: America’s Wildest Folk Festival
Mummers’ celebrations in America date back to colonial times, combining the boisterous Swedish custom of celebrating the year’s end with noise making and the British mummery play tradition, with groups of five to 20 people marching from home to home with blackened faces, shouting and discharging firearms. The parade traces back to mid-17th-century roots, blending elements from Swedish, Finnish, Irish, English, German, and other European heritages, as well as African heritage. In 1790, when Philadelphia became the capital, President George Washington initiated a tradition of receiving “calls” from mummers at his mansion, but by the early 19th century celebrations became so popular that the city passed an act prohibiting “masquerades, masquerade balls, and masked processions” with threats of fine and imprisonment. While almost all parade participants are currently white, African American mummers existed in the past, including the all African American Golden Eagle Club formed in 1866 with 300 members in the 1906 parade, though judges systematically discriminated against black clubs. The parade’s theme song “Oh! Dem Golden Slippers” was composed by African American songwriter James Bland in 1879, and the Mummers’ signature “strut” can be traced back to the 19th century Cakewalk, a popular African American dance. The Philadelphia Mummers Parade is the oldest continuous folk parade in the United States, with the first formal, city-sponsored parade dating to 1901.
Fast Day: The Puritan Spring Holiday
Before Patriot’s Day was established, much of New England celebrated Fast Days, a day of public fasting and prayer proclaimed by royal or state governors most often in mid- or late April, with the Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaiming Fast Days as early as 1670. Fast days were officially dedicated to seeking God’s forgiveness, with Puritans opposing regular observances like Christmas and Easter due to their highly developed sense of divine providence, seeing every event as an immediate act of God. These days gradually became annual events – the thanksgiving feast in Connecticut by the 1650s and Massachusetts by 1660, with the spring fast taking longer, in Connecticut in the 1660s and Massachusetts by 1694. By the end of the seventeenth century, a new tradition of regular springtime fasts and autumnal thanksgivings existed alongside the original practice of declaring special holidays in response to providential events. Most colonists held strict Calvinist Protestant religious beliefs and saw God as giving both favor and anger, with Fast Days being officially sanctioned attempts to appease God’s wrath and prevent calamities like crop failure, disease or natural disasters. In the early nineteenth century, the annual fast day receded in importance even as the autumn thanksgiving gained in popularity, with the rigors of daylong services and four or five-hour sermons diminishing to single two-hour morning services.
Negro Election Day: Democracy in Disguise
Negro Election Day or Negroes Hallowday was a festival that began in 1741 in several New England towns as part of the local election of the black representative of that community, incorporating aspects of West African culture including traditional dancing, African feasting, and parades. Since African-Americans during pre-revolutionary America had not gained the vote and did not do so until the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Election Day festivities held by whites did not appeal to the slave population because they could not vote themselves. The festival was a “distinctly African American festival” that incorporated African traditions like ring dances, with free and enslaved Black people in Boston congregating on the common, drinking, gambling, dancing and enjoying themselves without interference from whites. Between 1750 and 1850, researchers claim that at least 31 black kings and governors were elected, with most being enslaved people and all from New England. After the Civil War, the festival lost its zeal amongst black communities for reasons unknown, possibly spurred by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Picture this: while white colonists held their elections, enslaved and free Black communities created their own parallel democracy, complete with kings and governors who served as cultural ambassadors between worlds.
St. John’s Eve: Voodoo in the Bayous
St. John’s Eve, celebrated on June 23, was a powerful Creole and Afro-Caribbean celebration involving bonfires, Voodoo rituals, and healing traditions that profoundly influenced later Mardi Gras and jazz funeral customs in Louisiana and Florida. This mystical night combined Catholic saint veneration with West African spiritual practices, creating one of America’s most potent examples of religious syncretism. The celebration featured elaborate rituals around water and fire, believed to possess special healing powers on this particular evening when the veil between worlds grew thin. Practitioners would gather herbs at midnight, light sacred fires on the beaches, and perform ceremonies that blended elements of European folk magic with African spiritual traditions. The festival was particularly strong in New Orleans, where Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo queen, would hold massive gatherings on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Unlike many other forgotten festivals, St. John’s Eve survived longer in isolated communities, with some elements persisting into the 20th century.
Floralia: Flowers in Utopia
Inspired by the ancient Roman festival of flowers, various utopian communities in 19th-century America, particularly the Shakers, celebrated spring with elaborate floral offerings and sacred dance that helped shape later May Day traditions. These celebrations represented more than just seasonal observance – they embodied the utopian vision of harmony between humans and nature. The Shakers, known for their austere lifestyle, would transform their communities into gardens of earthly delight during Floralia, with intricate flower arrangements adorning their meetinghouses. The festival included group dances performed in flowing white robes, creating ethereal processions through flower-laden halls. Other communities like Oneida, Brook Farm, and New Harmony developed their own variations, often incorporating elements of free love philosophy and communal living ideals. These celebrations served as recruitment tools, attracting visitors who were dazzled by the beauty and apparent happiness of utopian life. The tradition influenced the broader American labor movement’s adoption of May Day celebrations, though stripped of its mystical and sexual undertones.
Corn Palace Festivals: Agrarian Pride
Throughout the late 1800s Midwest, farming towns constructed elaborate palaces decorated entirely with corn and grain, hosting massive harvest festivals that boosted agrarian pride before fading with industrialization and urbanization. These weren’t modest decorations – entire buildings would be covered in intricate mosaics made from different colored corn, wheat, oats, and other grains, creating stunning folk art displays that took months to complete. The most famous was Mitchell, South Dakota’s Corn Palace, which still exists today, but dozens of smaller communities had their own versions. Towns competed fiercely to create the most spectacular displays, with some hiring artists from Eastern cities to design elaborate murals and patterns. The festivals featured agricultural competitions, political speeches celebrating farming life, and elaborate dinners showcasing local produce. These celebrations represented the last gasp of agrarian America’s cultural dominance, occurring just as industrial cities were beginning to eclipse rural areas in political and economic power. The tradition peaked in the 1890s before gradually disappearing as young people left farms for factory jobs.
Junkanoo: The Suppressed Carnival
Enslaved Africans held masked processions during Christmas known as Junkanoo, a tradition that survived in the Bahamas but was brutally suppressed in the U.S., though it influenced later carnival cultures throughout the American South. The festival featured elaborate costumes made from scraps and discarded materials, transformed into fantastical creatures and characters through African artistic traditions. Participants would create masks from gourds, feathers from chickens, and brilliant colors from plant dyes, parading through slave quarters and sometimes into white areas. The music combined African drums with European instruments, creating a unique sound that would later influence jazz, blues, and gospel music. Southern planters initially tolerated Junkanoo as a way to allow enslaved people to “blow off steam” during the Christmas season, but grew fearful as the celebrations became more organized and elaborate. By the 1820s, most Southern states had banned large gatherings of enslaved people, effectively killing the tradition in the mainland United States. However, the aesthetic and musical influences can be traced through Mardi Gras krewes, second line parades in New Orleans, and even modern hip-hop culture’s emphasis on elaborate costume and performance.
Whipping the Christmas Cat: Rural Superstition
Among Pennsylvania Dutch communities in the 19th century, a bizarre rural ritual involved men “whipping” a hidden cat-shaped object to predict the next year’s luck – a strange folk superstition that revealed the deep anxiety of farming communities about their uncertain future. This wasn’t actual animal cruelty, but rather a ritualistic performance using a burlap sack or wooden figure shaped like a cat, hidden somewhere in the barn or house. The ceremony typically took place on Christmas Eve, with the men of the community taking turns striking the object while chanting German folk rhymes passed down through generations. The vigor of the “whipping” and the sound it made supposedly predicted everything from crop yields to marriage prospects for the coming year. The ritual likely originated in medieval European traditions where cats were associated with both good and bad fortune, representing the dual nature of fate itself. Women and children were typically excluded from the ceremony, which reinforced male authority in these patriarchal farming communities. The practice died out by the early 1900s as Pennsylvania Dutch communities became more assimilated into mainstream American culture and such “superstitious” practices were discouraged by modern Protestant ministers.
San Juan Fiesta: Summer Solstice Fusion
Dating back to the 16th century in the American Southwest, San Juan Fiesta blended Spanish Catholic traditions with Indigenous summer solstice celebrations, featuring elaborate water rituals that are still observed in New Mexico but largely forgotten elsewhere. The festival occurs around June 24, combining the Catholic feast of St. John the Baptist with ancient Pueblo ceremonies celebrating the longest day of the year. Central to the celebration are water blessings and ritual cleansings, reflecting both Christian baptismal traditions and Native American purification ceremonies. In Santa Fe and other Rio Grande villages, the day begins with dawn prayers at local churches, followed by processions to rivers where participants wade into the water for blessings. Traditional foods include fresh corn, squash blossoms, and early summer fruits, served at community gatherings that last well into the night. The celebration features folk dances that blend Spanish colonial steps with Indigenous movements, creating a unique choreographic tradition found nowhere else in North America. Unlike many forgotten festivals, San Juan Fiesta persists in isolated communities where Hispanic and Native American populations maintain strong cultural ties, serving as a living example of successful cultural synthesis that predates the United States by centuries.
Belsnickeling: The German Christmas Terror
A German-American Christmas tradition in Pennsylvania and Appalachia during the 1800s involved masked figures called Belsnickel visiting homes and demanding treats while questioning children about their behavior – a precursor to both Santa Claus and Halloween customs. Unlike the jolly Santa Claus figure that would later emerge, Belsnickel was deliberately frightening, dressed in dark furs and rags with a terrifying mask, carrying switches to threaten naughty children. The tradition served as a form of community social control, with the Belsnickel figure quizzing children about their conduct throughout the year and distributing both rewards and punishments accordingly. Adults would often use the visits to reinforce moral lessons and community values, with the masked figure knowing intimate details about each family’s domestic situation. The custom created a sense of supernatural accountability that extended beyond the immediate family to the entire community. German immigrants brought this tradition from the Old World, where similar figures existed in various regions, but it took on distinctly American characteristics in isolated Appalachian communities. The practice began to fade as German-American communities assimilated and as the more pleasant Santa Claus figure, popularized by Clement Clarke Moore’s poem and Coca-Cola advertisements, replaced the threatening Belsnickel in American Christmas tradition.
Moving Day: Citywide Chaos
On May 1st in colonial New York City and Boston, entire cities would relocate households in a chaotic, festival-like event before fixed leases and modern rental agreements became standard practice. This wasn’t just a few families moving – it was literally thousands of households changing residences on the same day, creating one of the most remarkable spectacles in early American urban life. The tradition developed because most leases expired on May 1st, forcing tenants to either renew or find new accommodations simultaneously. Streets would be clogged with horse-drawn carts, handcarts, and people carrying furniture, clothing, and household goods in a massive game of musical chairs. Enterprising entrepreneurs would set up temporary refreshment stands and equipment rental businesses to capitalize on the chaos. The wealthy would hire professional movers
Christian Wiedeck, all the way from Germany, loves music festivals, especially in the USA. His articles bring the excitement of these events to readers worldwide.
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