The 'Belsnickling' Christmas tradition in Berkeley County

"Belsnickling" refers to an old Christmas tradition in which people dressed up in costumes and went from house to house, usually in small groups, to celebrate and spread holiday cheer. It's a practice that has historical roots in German and Pennsylvania Dutch communities.

Wikipedia summarizes: "Belsnickel (also known as Belschnickel, Belznickle, Belznickel, Pelznikel, Pelznickel, Bell Sniggle) is a crotchety, fur-clad Christmas gift-bringer figure in the folklore of" parts of Germany. "The figure is also preserved in Pennsylvania Dutch communities."

In some areas, including in Berkeley County, this practice was called "bettying" and was accompanied by wearing masks and costumes.

Wanda Byers Cave, who grew up in the Hedgesville area in the 1940s, vividly remembered bettying, she wrote in the Historic Hedgesville & Environs Facebook group in 2018.

"Between Christmas and New Year, as soon as it got dark, the adults would dress up so as not to be recognized, dress the kids, all get with other families, load into several cars and head out to friends and neighbors," Wanda recalled.

"They would park out of sight to hide the cars. The kids would pair up with different adults so as not to be recognized. They would knock on doors and say, ‘Betty, Betty, Betty!’ People would let us into the living room and try to guess who each person was. So much fun. After they guessed, we would take off our masks and see their tree, have some cookies and milk, then go off to the next house. Sometimes we waded in knee-deep snow."

The late Leonard Messick, who was a few years older than Wanda and grew up in the area in the 1930s, had shared that his memories of bettying included some of the "masks" being fashioned out of ladies' pantyhose pulled over heads.

"Bettying was a sure thing around Christmas in Back Creek Valley," he wrote. "It died out with my generation. The last to visit us at Jones Springs was in the early 1940s. Eugene and Ida Burkhart and two other couples visited."

Tom Tyson pitched in to add that one of his memories from his childhood in Glengary was these stocking-heads being rather scary to a young boy, but that it was fun to share refreshments, laughs, and guessing games over who was underneath the disguises.

Shirley Riggs shared that her husband, Larry Dale Riggs, also recalled bettying in the mid- to late 1940s, with his family's living room filled with people in costume. The visitors wouldn't speak until their identities were guessed.

My grandmother, Wilma Avey Donaldson, would join her sisters Bess Zombro and Vallie Stuckey to dress up during Christmas week and have a lot of fun together bettying in the Tomahawk area. This was way before my time, but my aunt Dianne Kenney recalls it because she said she drove them around (but stayed in the car so as not to give their identities away).

My grandmother Wilma Avey Donaldson (from left) and her sisters Reatha, Verda Violet, Bessie Olive, and Vallie Mae, at a Tupperware party in Hedgesville around 1958.

By the mid-1950s, bettying had mostly gone out of style in Berkeley County. Roland Gonano said that for two or three years in a row, he and his then-girlfriend (later wife), Joyce Dove, visited some of her relatives in costume and encouraged them to play guess-who, but that the game was already becoming old-fashioned by then.

Claetus Canby also remembered bettying as late as the 1950s, when he was a child, but said he never really heard anything about it after the 1960s.