COMMONSCUT

Commons Cut Stories

Folklore and Old Customs

Holiday traditions, superstitions, rituals (Thanksgiving Maskers, turnip lanterns, Krampus).

Some traditions are older than they look, and some are much younger. Here are the real histories of holiday customs, from Stir-up Sunday and the Baddeley cake to New York's Thanksgiving Maskers and the Victorian vinegar valentine.

Where a popular origin story has no source behind it, we say so.

5 stories

  • Stir-up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent.

    Where Stir-up Sunday Came From

    British families stir the Christmas pudding on "Stir-up Sunday," supposedly by medieval church decree. The name comes from a prayer, the pudding comes from a schoolboy parody, and the decree has never turned up, even with a $1,000 reward offered for it.

  • Thanksgiving, Thu Nov 26, 2026.

    New York’s Thanksgiving Maskers

    More than a century ago, New York children put on masks and their parents' old clothes and went door to door asking for pennies. They did it on Thanksgiving Day, and in the 1930s the city's schools chief and its charities worked to end the custom.

  • Jan 1, 2027

    New York’s 100-Call New Year

    For most of the 1800s, New Year's Day in New York meant gentlemen racing from parlor to parlor making 100 or more social calls in twelve hours, while the women of the house stayed home with oysters, cake and hot punch, counting the cards.

  • Twelfth Night.

    An Actor’s Twelfth Night Cake

    In 1794 a comic actor named Robert Baddeley left money in his will for a Twelfth Night cake for the actors of Drury Lane. The London Museum says Drury Lane actors are still greeted with the cake on Twelfth Night.

  • Valentine's Day (Sun Feb 14, 2027).

    Vinegar Valentines, the Victorian Hate Mail

    In the 1880s you could walk into a stationer's in February and buy, for pennies, a printed card calling your neighbor a drunk, a nag or an ass, then mail it unsigned, and newspapers complained that millions of people did exactly that.

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