JSランゲージスクールブログ | Mischief night
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Continuing with the Halloween theme this month, today I want to talk about mischief night. Mischief night is October 30th, the day before Halloween. Mischief means to do naughty things that you aren’t supposed to do. Many children and teenagers play pranks on mischief night, but I don’t think these pranks are very good, because they make messes in innocent peoples’ yards.
The three most common pranks during this night are TPing, egging, and smashing pumpkins. In my opinion, all of these pranks are bad but they are very common in the U.S, especially TPing. TPing means toilet papering. This is when people throw rolls of toilet paper into trees on their neighbor’s yards. They use many rolls of toilet paper, so in the end the yard looks like this picture.
When I was young, I also went TPing with my friends. I didn’t think about how we were being bad and how hard it would be for the homeowners to clean their yards. I really regret it now.
Egging is when people (usually teenagers) throw eggs at the windows of houses. This is very hard to clean up. Smashing pumpkins means that the teenagers go to homes which have decorated jack-o-lanterns and they break the jack-o-lanterns. This also isn’t good because people spend lots of time making the jack-o-lanterns so it’s very mean and rude.
Mischief night actually comes from the UK, where it was popular in the 1800s. However, it was not the day before Halloween. It was in November. When the mischief nights started happening in America in the 1900s, they used the same name because both were nights that children tried to create mischief.
Overall, I think Halloween is a very fun holiday in the U.S, and I really like it. However, I believe that the tradition of mischief night should end. Are there any similar nights in Japan?
