Trick or Treat!

Imagine this! It is Halloween night. It’s a full moon and there’s a chill in the air. You dress up as one of your favorite characters and walk down the sidewalks of your neighborhood, an adult not too far behind. You are surrounded by ghosts, goblins, vampires and witches - creatures of all sorts!

Spooky cobwebs and jack o’ lanterns line railings and porches. Scary sound effects can be heard from one place to the other. You notice yet another house with its porch light on and bound up the steps in excitement. With a pumpkin bucket in hand, you ring the doorbell.

Trick or Treat!

A great many of us probably spent Halloween night going door to door looking for candy and hopefully maybe some full-size candy bars!

Trick or treating on Halloween has become a huge part of not just U.S. society, but in other countries as well. If you celebrated Halloween or Trick or Treat, you probably have some fond memories of the holiday whether you were a Trick or Treater yourself or as you got older, became the one that handed out candy.

But how exactly did Trick or Treat come to be?

The Beginning

The origins of Trick or Treating go back much further than you might guess— all the way back to the Middle Ages and back even further than that! To the ancient Celts!

On the ancient holiday of Samhain, a Celtic festival, the ancient Celts would don animal skin costumes in hopes to deter any evil spirits. To ensure that any such spirits would indeed stay away, food was left out in hopes that these spirits would be satisfied.

And then there was the concept of All Soul’s Day which began approximately 1000 A.D. During this holiday, people would go door to door asking for soul cakes in exchange for a prayer to the household that they would offer a prayer for the deceased. This is where the concept of modern trick or treating begins to take shape.

The exchange of a soul cake for a prayer gradually changed into a custom popular among children. Back then children would go door to door and offer some sort of mild entertainment like singing a song — probably one that was popular in that era — and in exchange, get a treat. Instead of candy, children would receive food such as nuts and fruit, and if they were really lucky, coins!

The concept of Trick or Treating has most certainly changed throughout history, but how did it come to be the Trick or Treat we know it to be today?

Give Us A Treat or You’ll Get a Trick!

Halloween has at times been, perhaps, one of the most mischievous holidays and more so doing the 1920’s in the United States. It was during the night of Halloween in which kids would cause all sorts of mischief ranging from soaping windows, detaching a rain gutter and throwing it on the porch, and even tossing out flour to men nicely dressed in black coats! There was of course, later on, ringing doorbells and running and toilet papering neighborhood properties. The majority of these pranks were harmless mischief but still incredibly annoying to the receiver!

Trick or Treat had now taken on a whole new meaning: Give a treat or get a trick! The concept was going door to door for candy was also a way to help prevent any mischief doing.

Trick or Treating as we know it didn’t make its way into the mainstream until the 1930s. And then by the 1950s around the time that TV had become a mainstream part of American households, people’s costumes reflected that of the pop culture of that time. Kids began dressing up as their favorite cartoon character or superhero.

My Memories of Trick or Treating

I loved dressing up in costume and Trick or Treating as a kid! My costumes were always something different and low-key scary but always fun! I’ve been a witch, a vampire, a zombie, and the horror character, Ghost Face from the movie, Scream. I remember always being sure to hit the nice neighborhoods where all of the kids seemed to go and where they’d hand out full-size Snickers and Hershey bars!