fox night

fox night n [Perh folk-etym for Fawkes + night; in parts of England the night before Guy Fawkes Day, which occurs on Nov 5, is a traditional “mischief night.”]

= mischief night n.

1993 DARE File nwMI (as of c1935), Regarding additional names for the night before Halloween, we engaged in a rather vandal-like event called “Clothesline Night.” . . There was also another name . . same night, but meant just . . the usual doorbell ringing and soaping of windows, and that was called “Fox Night.” 2000 Ibid nwMI, My wife and I found we had different names for the night before Halloween. Although we are both from Michigan, she is from the Upper Peninsula and I’m from the Lower Peninsula. She said everyone called it “Fox Night” and I called it “Devil’s Night”. 2014 in 2017 DARE File—Internet ceMN, nwMI, In Great Britain, Nov. 4 is Fawkes Night, but in Duluth in the 1970s and ’80s, the night before Halloween was “Fox Night.” It was a warm-up for Halloween, with no costumes and no candy—instead it focused entirely on vandalism and mischief. . . [Comment:] . . [I]t fascinates me how Fox Night was such a well-known thing in my neighborhood during a very short era. I’ve asked people who were West Duluth teenagers in the early 1970s about Fox Night and they have no idea what I’m talking about. And by the mid-1990s I think the whole concept had died out completely. . . [Comment:] Fox Night was a thing in Calumet, Michigan in the 1980s. It was a night of general mischief and of egg wars between a handful of members of each high school class.