# Johnny-come-lately masquerading as a classic **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 19, 2018, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818 "2018-03-19T10:28:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/121 "2018-03-29T23:48:28Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > Even in the U.S. Halloween didn’t become popular until the '60’s. Where are you getting that from? It was certainly popular by the 1950s when I was growing up in New York. And my grandmother talked about making a Krazy Kat costume for my aunt when she was growing up, which would have been in the 1930s. [Halloween began to be popular in the US in the mid 1800s,](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3274882/Halloween-ages-spooky-masks-1900s-Kim-Kardashian-breaks-internet-outfits-2015-costume-trends-evolved-past-115-years.html) and by the 1930s there were mass produced costumes of comics characters for kids. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/122 "2018-03-30T10:16:14Z")
Easter egg hunts and the Easter bunny are a relatively new thing in the UK, aren’t they? I mean when I was a kid I’d heard of them but they weren’t part of my actual experience of Easter. Now half the parents I know are hosting Easter egg hunt parties in their gardens. At the same time stuff from my childhood like Easter bonnet parades and egg rolling seems to have become niche. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/123 "2018-03-30T11:16:29Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Easter egg hunts and the Easter bunny are a relatively new thing in the UK, aren’t they? I mean when I was a kid I’d heard of them but they weren’t part of my actual experience of Easter. Now half the parents I know are hosting Easter egg hunt parties in their gardens. At the same time stuff from my childhood like Easter bonnet parades and egg rolling seems to have become niche. I had this conversation yesterday. Exactly as you say: Easter Bunny was something you heard about on American telly and - to me at least - was somewhat unexplained. I’d heard of it but knew nothing of what actually went on. We were talking about the inconvenience of having another Father Christmas type subterfuge to consider, where our parents were free simply present us with chocolate from themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/124 "2018-03-30T12:16:01Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Where are you getting that from? It was certainly popular by the 1950s when I was growing up in New York. And my grandmother talked about making a Krazy Kat costume for my aunt when she was growing up, which would have been in the 1930s. > > [Halloween began to be popular in the US in the mid 1800s,](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3274882/Halloween-ages-spooky-masks-1900s-Kim-Kardashian-breaks-internet-outfits-2015-costume-trends-evolved-past-115-years.html) and by the 1930s there were mass produced costumes of comics characters for kids. Also Halloween postcards [used to be a thing](https://hyperallergic.com/408148/vintage-halloween-cards/) early last century. ([They are](https://www.collectorsweekly.com/postcards/halloween) [collectables now](https://www.oldpostcards.com/halloween-postcards.htm).) ---
**Author:** ![AlonzoSWhitebeard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71c47a/32.png) [@AlonzoSWhitebeard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlonzoSWhitebeard)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/125 "2018-03-30T12:18:46Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > At the same time stuff from my childhood like Easter bonnet parades and egg rolling seems to have become niche. I think we are contemporaries (I’m an U75 refugee) and yet I don’t remember either of those at all. It was easier to find egg rolls in the 70s, but that’s presumably not what you mean. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/126 "2018-03-30T13:18:35Z")
> [@AlonzoSWhitebeard](#): > > I think we are contemporaries (I’m an U75 refugee) and yet I don’t remember either of those at all. It was easier to find egg rolls in the 70s, but that’s presumably not what you mean. Could be regional, I guess. They are still done sometimes now; some of my great-nieces were in an Easter bonnet parade the other day and a quick google shows lots of schools still doing it, so I could be wrong about it being niche. Egg rolling is rolling decorated eggs down a hill in a race to see which could go furthest. The National Trust and some other organisations do it; when I was a kid this was another thing done at school, though my school being on a hill probably helped. Wiki informs me that both traditions exist in America too, though slightly different. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/127 "2018-03-30T13:28:55Z")
In America, Halloween is often described as some kind of “ancient Celtic tradition.” But when I was a kid, none of my relatives in Ireland paid any attention to Halliween. Nobody carved pumpkins or went trick or treating in Ireland. TODAY they do, because Irish kids learned about it from American pop culture! Got that? Irish kids had to learn about a supposedly ancient Irish holiday from American TV. St. Patrick’s Day worked the same way. In Ireland, it was a day to go to Church. Parades and drinking and corned beef were American things that worked their way back to Ireland. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/128 "2018-03-30T13:39:50Z")
BTW, if you aren’t in America and your country has started celebrating Halloween recently, [you are a victim of American cultural imperialism](https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=pT2-WuyQCczqjwSf_a2wAg&q=halloween+cultural+imperialism&oq=halloween+cultural+imperialism&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1.3518.6762.0.7797.16.11.0.0.0.0.1005.1840.6-1j1.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..14.2.1837....0.aVjTHkwPwbQ). ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/129 "2018-04-01T03:30:05Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Again not an in-my-lifetime sort of thing, but “chai” is so iconically associated with India that it’s always a bit of a surprise to me that tea was introduced there during British rule and tea-drinking didn’t really catch on till the 1920s. And tea is so iconically associated with Britain, it always a bit of a surprise that until tea was introduced to India (from China), Britain was a coffee-drinking nation. Lloyds of London, the uber marine insurance company, was a coffee house. The British coffee crop in Cylon was devastated by Coffee Rust, and replanted with tea plantations. I don’t know the time scale, but that might have had something to do with it. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/130 "2018-04-01T07:41:30Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > And tea is so iconically associated with Britain, it always a bit of a surprise that until tea was introduced to India (from China), Britain was a coffee-drinking nation. Lloyds of London, the uber marine insurance company, was a coffee house. As was the London Stock Exchange. Jonathan’s Coffee House was where all the stock jobbers and brokers hung out; when they decided to sort themselves out with their own premises and actually create a stock exchange, it was known as “New Jonathan’s”. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/131 "2018-04-01T15:35:56Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > The British coffee crop in Cylon was devastated by Coffee Rust, and replanted with tea plantations. I don’t know the time scale, but that might have had something to do with it. More likely was that the [East India Company](https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/tea-blog/tea-over-coffee) could import tea directly while coffee had to be bought from the Dutch or French. > [@](#): > > Toward the close of the seventeenth century, however, the East India Company was much more interested in tea than in coffee. Having lost out to the French and the Dutch on the “little brown berry of Arabia,” The Company engaged in so lively a propaganda for tea that, whereas the annual tea imports from 1700 to 1710 averaged 800,000 pounds, in 1721 more than one million pounds of tea were brought in; in 1757, some four million pounds were imported. And when the coffee house finally succumbed, tea, and not coffee, was firmly entrenched as the national drink of the English people. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2018, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818/132 "2018-04-02T07:48:56Z")
To me, St. Patrick’s Day is only the “wear green or be pinched” day, and the other stuff seems more recent. Is that accurate? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-come-lately-masquerading-as-a-classic/810818.md?page=6)