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In the late nineteenth century, when candles began appearing on graves in some Swedish towns, they were more likely to be lit at Christmas than in November. Some of the recorded examples were at children’s graves.
In the medieval Icelandic Ynglinga saga, King Vanlandi has been asleep only a short time when he cries out that a mara is treading on him.
On November 1, 1992, the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on costumed children carving pumpkins at a restaurant in Hellerup, outside Copenhagen.
In a Canadian advertisement reproduced from the Christmas 1907 edition of the Toronto Globe, the Prairies appear beneath the words “The Last Best West.” Grain fields, farm buildings and cattle accompany promises of “illimitable opportunities” and “healthy happy homes.”
“Köyriä vai uunia?” — “Kekri or the stove?” That was the question visitors might put to a farm household in the Kuopio countryside when the autumn festival came around. According to a local recollection collected in 1936, they expected food or drink and threatened a broken stove if their hosts refused.