Happy Cabbage Night: a postcard from Vermont

When my sister emailed today to say "Happy Cabbage Night," it took me back to the Vermont of my childhood and teens. There, the night before Halloween was the time for tricksters to perform the misdeeds that characterize what other North American regions and states call Mischief Night, Goosey Night, Gate Night, etcetera. (In French-speaking Canada, just over the northern Vermont border, it was called Nuit de Chou.)

Why cabbages? I never asked that question as a kid. As an adult, and a food writer, it fascinates me. Cabbages were once thought to have divinatory powers that came into play on the night before All Hallows Day Eve, now known to us as Halloween. (The Celts would have written it Hallowe'en, and it in turn was the night before the pagan celebration of Samhain on November 1.)

Think of Cabbage Night, then, as a sort of "night before the night before" thing, when tricksters reigned. The fact that cabbages were at the end of their season at this time of year made the cabbage patch both armory (round cannonballs!) and magic medicine cabinet, a source of the stalks and heads to be used in divination rituals. (Those were mostly aimed at discovering one's future spouse.)

I love this description of the Cabbage Night havoc unleashed upon the Vermont capital city of Montpelier in 1879, according to Vermont When: “Projectors and projectiles, cabbage head and cabbage stumps, were out in their usual strength and eloquence. Sundry strings were strung across sundry streets, sundry dooryards and lawn decorations were displaced, but nobody was killed."

My sister, Melissa Cook, has much more vivid memories of Cabbage Night than I do. So in honor of the evening at hand, I asked her to send me her recollections. Here they are, fresh from the boondocks of Hinesburg, Vt., where the pranking must be just now getting underway:

I was schooled very early in the hallowed Vermont tradition of Cabbage Night, the night before Halloween. By three, I already had a dread fear of having cabbages thrown at me on October 30, and ran fast over several neighbors’ yards to get home safely late that afternoon.

It goes back way into the 19th century. Vermont kids were farm kids. No internet. Life could be dull. Halloween gave a chance to act out, and the night before was best if you wanted to show up at the next farmhouse on Halloween expecting popcorn balls and fudge.

In October there’s a nice variety of rotting vegetables left in gardens here. It could have been called Tomato Night, but the heft of cabbages won out. Nowadays cabbages aren’t grown so much. Still, Cabbage Night has remained a celebration of degenerate food destruction. Perfectly good pumpkins are slaughtered.

One thing not done here anymore is pushing over outhouses. And the late-20th-century trend of dropping concrete blocks off interstate overpasses on Cabbage Night has also waned.

I have never thrown a rotten cabbage myself. I’d rather make colcannon.