After nearly nine decades, one of central Iowa’s quirkiest Halloween traditions is coming to an end — at least on paper.
Beggars’ Night, the Des Moines–area custom of trick-or-treating the night before Halloween, will officially be replaced with Oct. 31 festivities beginning in 2025.
The decision comes after last year’s storms forced thousands of children to trick-or-treat on Oct. 31 for the first time since the tradition began in 1938.
“The weather was just predicted to be absolutely abysmal: high winds, rain, cold — just a miserable evening," Clive Mayor John Edwards said. "So the metro communities moved very quickly in unison to move it from the 30th to the 31st."
Following the weather-related shift, he and other metro mayors asked residents to weigh in on when they preferred trick-or-treating: Oct. 30, Oct. 31 or the last Saturday of the month.
More than 4,300 Des Moines residents responded, and the results were clear: Halloween drew nearly twice as many first-choice ranked votes as Beggars’ Night.
Edwards, who chaired the Metro Advisory Council subcommittee that organized the survey, said the outcome is the result of many years of consideration.
“There have been concerns over time about Beggars’ Night and the timing of it,” Edwards said. “With what happened last year with the weather, it was moved to Halloween, and that seemed to be a success for many of the communities.”
He mentioned that he thinks opinions have also changed as the population of the metro has grown.
“I think part of that may be the number of people that move into the Des Moines metro from other communities where the tradition is 'Halloween on Halloween.' That's when you go trick-or-treating," he said. "And again, by voting in the survey, that's certainly what we heard.”
The unified survey helped communities coordinate what had long been a patchwork of local traditions, he said.
What is Beggars' Night?
Beggars' Night was born out of mischief. In 1938, The Des Moines Register reported that Des Moines police had fielded more than 550 vandalism reports on a single Halloween night, with incidents ranging from fires to windows smashed with bricks. To prevent further chaos, city leaders moved trick-or-treating to Oct. 30 and encouraged children to earn their candy with jokes, riddles and songs.
The idea worked, and the night became known as Beggars’ Night. The tradition spread to other parts of Iowa and even parts of Ohio and New York. Now Des Moines’ Halloween customs will once again align with the rest of the country, but Edwards stressed that for many, the tradition of trading jokes for candy isn't going anywhere.
“All we are doing is changing the night. We're not really changing the traditions," he said. "I think the metro will still expect the kids to dress up in costumes, tell us corny jokes, then get their treats. It's just a shift by one day, and I don't think that that's going to be an appreciable difference for anyone, other than the fact that we will have responded as a metro community to what our residents wanted."
Trick-or-treating will be held on Oct. 31, 2025 from 6 - 8 p.m. in Adel, Altoona, Ankeny, Carlisle, Clive, Des Moines, Grimes, Indianola, Johnston, Norwalk, Pleasant Hill, Urbandale, Waukee, West Des Moines and Winterset.
Some metro communities, including Bondurant and Windsor Heights, will continue holding trick-or-treating on the Saturday before Halloween, based on prior resident surveys. But by 2026, when Halloween falls on a Saturday, every community in the metro is expected to celebrate on the same night.
