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serenade noun A raucous, spontaneous celebration usually late at night, especially on the wedding night at the residence of the newly married couple, characterized by the beating of pots and pans, ringing of cowbells, and various pranks, but not music; hence verb = to engage in this celebration.

1939 Hall Coll (Cades Cove TN) Serenadin’= men would go from one house to another, makin’ lots of noise, ringin’ cowbells, shootin’ guns. 1960 Mason Memoir 75 On Christmas eve night, it was customary for a group of young men to gather up and go serenading. We would take along all the old cowbells, muzzle loading shot-guns, horns, and any other noise making device which was available. There were always three or four banjoes and fiddles in the crowd. We would try to slip up to someone’s house without being discovered. The serenade would usually begin with a long blast from a trumpet. The trumpets were usually made from rams horns. Then the firing of the shotguns combined with the ringing cowbells added to the commotion. If a family were somehow missed by the serenaders, they felt as if they had been slighted. 1960 Stubbs Mountain-Wise (Feb.-March) 6 On his wedding night a bunch of folks decided to give Uncle Jim and his bride a “serenation.” They went up to his house about ten o’clock, began to explode dynamite, ring cowbells and make all the noise they could. But when Uncle Jim came running out of the house in his “drawers-tail,” he scared the girls half to death and put an end to the “serenation.” 1966 Dakin Vocab Ohio River Valley 497 In eastern Kentucky serenade is still used by some of the oldest generation but the younger speakers say chivaree exclusively. 1988 Russell It Happened 48 The serenade, or shivaree, would take place later at night, on after the supper and music making. 1993 Page and Smith Foxfire Toys and Games 74 The night before Christmas was always the big night back when I was a growing up. We’d get firecrackers and cowbells and shotguns and we’d just go from one house to another. We called it serenading. [Did you ever hear tell of that?] Yeah, we’d just go and slip up on a home. We’d wait till they went to bed, you see, before we started. And we’d slide up in the yard, because if they run out and beat you and hollered “Christmas gift” we had to have something to give them. But if we slid into the yard and went to shooting those firecrackers and ringing them cowbells—that big old bell that you could hear all over the mountains—and holler and whooping until they got up and then they brought us in and had to treat us with fruits and candies and stuff and maybe then some of them joined us and we’d go on to the next house and we’d be lucky if we got in just a little before daylight the next morning.