The following is an account of what a Dutch Halloween party looked like in New York City, 1899.
An Old Fashioned Dutch Halloween
The Old Dutch Families of New York Celebrate it Nearly as They Do Today in Holland
In old Colonial days the upper part of New York State was filled with Hollanders who brought over with them, and clung to, the traditions of their country. Some descendants of these old New Yorkers are found in the young people who make a little colony near Central Park west; and among these there is to be a Halloween merrymaking on Halloween night which will be unique and very enjoyable for the young people, as well as pretty for the elders to behold.
The Halloween party takes place in the kitchen of a corner residence. The kitchen happens to be a tiled one; and if the tiles get a slash or two of extra blue paint before Halloween it will only be because the hostess has Holland delf in mind, and the pictures of the kitchens of her ancestresses.
14 Invites
There are an even fourteen invited to the Halloween party. And when the young people arrive they are to be “paired” by a unique process.
Pairing Off
At the door there will stand a basket of envelopes – a very tiny basket, to be sure – and from the basket each will select an envelope. This will be opened in the dressing room and it will contain a little verse. The verse will be after this fashion:
“Your partner’s name begins with G,
Another name it cannot be!”
As there will be several G’s in the company, the hostess has obviated possible embarrassments by arranging one couplet thus:
“Yes, her name begins with G;
But it ends in Y or Z.”
And thus all embarrassment on the score of the possession of the Misses G is ended.
Only the young men of the party are to make a selection; and as the envelopes – prepared by a very swell stationer – are edged with blue and monogrammed, they make pretty souvenirs of the evening.
Special Dishes
The dishes upon the table are very beautiful. They are hand painted by the hostess, who has taken all the white china in the house for the purpose. The flowers and figures are put on with ordinary oil colors and will be very serviceable for an evening. Unless careful washed they will become marred at the first dip into water, but the hostess does not care for that so long as they serve the purpose of her Dutch Halloween party.
They are done in blue, with great Dutch ships sailing upon very blue ponds; and with blue men and women watching them from the shore.
The little dishes have just dashes of blue paint put on in cloud-like lines. Anyone who handles a paint brush knows how to produce this cloudy effect.
Halloween Games
The games to be played are not extremely childish ones. They are the games of grandmama, who in her time got as many of them as possible from the English traditions of Martha Washington, and the ladies of the first Cabinet.
Mistletoe Dance
One of them is the “mistletoe dance.”
From the center of the kitchen, before the great table has been borne into the middle of the room, there hangs a piece of green. It may be mistletoe, or just a big spray of chrysanthemums. It is tied with long streamers of blue, and one of the figures of the dance is to take the streamers and wind them in and out in a many stranded braid.
The mistletoe figure occurs in a dance like march when all pass under the mistletoe.
When the music, which has been tripping gaily along, suddenly pauses, there is a young woman under the mistletoe; and next behind her in the dance is the mistletoe young man.
The Fates of Halloween have decreed that these two, according to the traditions of the hostess, shall wed before the year has brought around another Halloween.
It does not follow that they wed each other. But that the young man will buy a bride’s bouquet before next October; and that the young woman will find her way up a church aisle with prayer book and bridal veil.
The Dress
A very pretty feature of this “grown up” Halloween party is the dress of the young ladies. This is blue, or blue and white, so that the blue effect is very pronounced.
One young lady will wear a blue cheese cloth, made with short waist and large puff sleeves. Another will wear a blue silk slip, veiled with white Mechlin lace – a Dutch heirloom; and a third rejoices in a blue and rose changeable silk also descended from her ancestors.
The Feast
The supper is another novelty when the usually evening supper is considered.
The bonbons of the feast are southern pralines – made by boiling maple syrup and butter together, until the sugar sugars again, and then by pouring over little piles of picked-out walnut meats.
The ices will be in forms of ships, as all Holland fancy shapes are, and there will be Dutch meats prepared specially for the feast by the choicest delicatessen in New York City.
There will also be the Halloween cake. But this will be a pie, and in each triangle there will be a number made of metal which corresponds with something yet to come. The cakes are doughnuts, olecokes, and Dutch sugar fritters – very sweet cakes baked in little lumps and covered with caraway seeds.
The numbers drawn correspond to a set of souvenirs of the feast. The number whose owner gets a Dutch ship will go abroad during the year. And he who gets a toy hoe will till the ground as a livelihood before he dies. And so the Fates go on revealing their secrets.
Prizes for Men
Blue paper jackets are given to each young man of the party, in a fancy bonbon paper, and this with a blue skull cap he is expected to wear. There will be blue lanterns hung around the kitchen walls; and as there will be a company of grown people to see the dancing there will be blue lights thrown upon the figures.
Halloween Divinations
If there is time the rollicking games of Halloween will be played. And in an attic chamber there is a mirror hanging, with a candle by its side, and an apple near at hand for the delectation of the maiden who must eat as she peers into the glass and watches in the semi-dusk, for the face of her coming sweetheart.
Then there is the pile of cabbages at the foot of the cellar steps for the maiden to pluck from, as she asks if her sweetheart will have red hair; and a cracker, eaten without a swallow of water, will tell the successful one that he will have no trouble in putting the fated question properly, at the right time.
The young hostess, who is one of the prettiest girls of New York society, will introducer several special features. And she promises that her Halloween shall be as successful as the most carefully planned Halloween of the swellest house-party of the season.
Source: Waterbury evening Democrat. (Waterbury, Conn.), 26 Oct. 1899.
