4 Fall Traditions Michigan and Ohio Do Completely Differently

Fall is in full swing, and the calendar is filling up with football, costumes and pumpkins.

Michiganders and Ohioans both love the season.

But they don’t always spend it the same way.

Here’s where the two states part ways when the leaves start to turn.

1. Rivalry Week

If you’re heading to Columbus, rivalry week ends Saturday, Nov. 28, when Ohio State hosts Michigan at Ohio Stadium.

Red tape Xs covered every M on campus during Michigan Week in 2019, the student newspaper The Lantern reported.

If you’re counting, Ohio State building names alone hold more than 170 M’s.

In 2013, Gov. John Kasich started declaring game day Scarlet Letter Saturday.

Michigan fans, meanwhile, have walked through Forest Hills Cemetery in Ann Arbor during Michigan-Ohio State week since 1997, a 2015 CBS Detroit report said.

The route’s stops include the graves of Bo Schembechler, Fielding Yost and Bob Ufer.

In 2015, Coach Jim Harbaugh cracked a buckeye at Schembechler’s grave and led fans in reciting “The Victors” at Yost’s.

2. Trick-or-Treat Night

Because Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission recommends trick-or-treat on Thursday, Oct. 29 in central Ohio.

If you’re planning around that date, local communities make the final call.

In 2025, a list from Detroit television station WDIV and a list from Lansing station WILX both kept trick-or-treat on Halloween itself, a Friday.

Several central Ohio communities went the other way that year, when CityScene listed Dublin, Hilliard, Gahanna and Westerville on Thursday, Oct. 30.

Grandview Heights and Worthington kept Friday, Oct. 31, on the same list.

That’s the difference: Many central Ohio communities move the night off a Friday, and the communities on those Michigan lists left it on Halloween.

Westerville’s city website calls it Beggar’s Night and moves trick-or-treat to the Thursday before when Halloween lands Friday through Sunday.

That Detroit list gave you precinct and fire department locations, with hours between 4 and 8 p.m.

3. Pumpkin Festivals

The Circleville Pumpkin Show in Ohio opens Wednesday, Oct. 21, and its site lists seven parades in four days.

Then-Mayor George R. Haswell conceived it in October 1903 as a small exhibit.

If you go, admission is free, and approximately 23,000 pumpkin pies and more than 100,000 pumpkin donuts get sold.

The Tuscola County Pumpkin Festival in Caro, Michigan, ran through Oct. 4 this year, and its site calls it the 45th.

Its Grand Parade on Sunday has bands and floats, where Circleville has seven parades.

Caro names its Grand Pumpkin by the largest diameter.

Circleville runs a giant-pumpkin contest too, and Spectrum News 1 reported in 2025 that the winner weighed 1,972 pounds.

Caro also crowns a Prince and Princess.

They’re second through sixth graders from Tuscola County who grew the biggest pumpkins by measured size.

If you don’t qualify for that contest, you can still enter a pumpkin grown anywhere.

Organizers give roughly 2,700 pumpkins to local schools, daycares and home schoolers.

4. Deer Season Openers

Michigan’s regular firearm deer season opens Nov. 15 in 2026 and runs through Nov. 30.

The Upper Peninsula news outlet Upper Michigan’s Source reported in 2023 that the Mid Peninsula and Bark River-Harris school districts planned to close for opening day.

A district superintendent told the outlet that hunting season is a strong tradition in the Upper Peninsula, and the districts said the closings let students and families take part.

In 2024, Bark River-Harris and Negaunee schools gave students and staff the day off.

A 2013 OutdoorHub story called skipping school for opening day and traveling to deer camp Michigan traditions.

More than 640,000 hunters had bought a deer tag the year before.

If you hunt in Ohio, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says the gun season opens Monday, Nov. 30, and runs through Sunday, Dec. 6.

If you’re comparing the two openers, Michigan’s firearm season runs 16 days and Ohio’s runs seven.

That Monday is the traditional opener.

Hunters checked 23,149 deer on the 2025 opener, down from 26,670 the year before.

Beggars Night History

WOSU's 2020 history of Beggars Night, spelled without an apostrophe, says the city's Halloween party may have been inspired by a 1920 street party.

The Columbus Dispatch described a 1920 crowd on High Street as larger than the street had probably ever seen.

Columbus held its first officially organized Halloween celebration and parade in 1925.

The annual party ran for almost 30 years, and by 1954 police officials said it had outlived its purpose.

In 1955, school and police leaders advised communities to observe three nights.

If you're wondering what Penny Night was, children went door to door asking for pennies instead of candy, on Thursday, Oct. 27.

Beggars Night followed on Friday, Oct. 28, and Halloween itself fell on Monday, Oct. 31.

The next year, officials asked the community to cut back to two nights, and vandalism was again to blame.