Anticks Redux
Confederated Pranking Day
A Day of Pranks and Capers, Inspired by the Original Boston Anticks
About Anticks Redux
Anticks Redux resurrects the gleeful misrule of the Boston Anticks and old mumming traditions, when pranks and merry mayhem ruled the streets. This is a reveler's holiday, an invitation to bamboozle friends, family, or neighbors in the name of seasonal mischief. The goal is balance: pranks should be clever, but never cruel, with the prankee ideally joining in the laughter before the eggnog wears off. Assign roles for spontaneous Christmas pageants, don masks if you can, and remember: any day that ends with a snowman in someone’s bathtub is a success. The original Anticks, who once paraded through Boston in borrowed gowns and powdered wigs, would be proud to see the old license for mischief renewed, one prank or pantomime at a time.
Ways to observe
(A) Low effort
Play a harmless prank on a friend or family member, like wrapping their toothbrush in Christmas paper or swapping the sugar for salt at breakfast. Apologize with eggnog.
(B) Recommended
Organize a neighborhood Prank Parade. Each household in on the fun gets to prank the next, passing along a prank ‘baton’ (e.g., a silly hat or a candy cane scepter) that must be incorporated into their trick.
(C) High effort
Stage a surprise Mummers’ Play at a neighbor’s house. Gather a small troupe of friends, don festive or ridiculous costumes, and show up unannounced to perform a bad Christmas pantomime. Assign roles on the spot, including a narrator who gleefully changes the plot mid-performance.
Inspiration
Wait—we used to organize ourselves into roaming party gangs and terrorize our neighbors in prank wars? Good lord, the things we’ve lost. Long before HOA guidelines and Ring doorbells, Christmas mischief had a sanctioned place in public life. In colonial New England, the Boston Anticks made sure of it. They were revelers in wigs and badly made disguises who knocked on doors, burst into homes, and staged impromptu performances in exchange for food, drink, or general tolerance. Their antics were the American echo of medieval European mumming: part folk theater, part prank war, and part seasonal chaos engine. Here’s what you need to know about mummers: they weren’t known for subtlety. They dressed as animals, royalty, or aggressively gender-swapped strangers, delivering low-budget morality plays with a generous helping of slapstick, satire, and just enough innuendo to make the town elders nervous. Every home was fair game, and no one was safe from being cast mid-dinner into a bit part as “drunken stable boy” or “man #2 with stick.” And for this, they were eventually scolded out of existence, deemed too undignified for America’s maturing holiday sensibilities. But their wild spirit lingers, and Anticks Redux is their resurrection. It’s a day for joyful meddling and unrehearsed, poorly realized performances.
Adornments
Watch
Home Alone (1990)
Kevin McCallister turns his house into a slapstick fortress, rigging every square foot with toy-store-grade defenses. Come for the pratfalls, stay for the subtle engineering genius. Required viewing for aspiring prank architects.
The Trouble with Angels (1966)
A pair of teenage girls disrupt life at a Catholic boarding school with a mix of charm, irreverence, and ill-advised makeovers. Rosalind Russell anchors the chaos with perfectly withering looks. Think Dead Poets Society with better uniforms and more bubble baths.
The Ref (1994)
A burglar ends up in a hostage situation that looks exactly like Christmas dinner. Denis Leary delivers acidic one-liners while trying to mediate between bickering in-laws. If your holiday leans chaotic, this may feel more like reportage than fiction.
Listen
You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch by Thurl Ravenscroft
A brass-heavy roast delivered in villainous basso. Ideal for sneaking cookies or narrating your mischief like a cartoon supervillain.
Back Door Santa by Clarence Carter
This blues track imagines Santa as a smooth operator with a key to the side entrance. Best played at a responsible volume if children are present.
Read
The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris
An acerbic, deadpan account of Sedaris’s time as a Macy’s elf. Packed with mischief and absurdity, it’s a bracing counterpoint to holiday sweetness.
Christmas Curiosities by John Grossman
A gallery of off-kilter Victorian holiday cards featuring grumpy vegetables and dead-eyed snowmen. Equal parts charming and cursed.
Make Merry in Step and Song by Bronwen Forbes
A detailed guide to the revels of old, filled with carols, folk tales, and traditional scripts for mummers’ plays. Perfect for bringing authenticity to your prank troupe’s debut.