Why Do People Trick-or-treat on Halloween?

Many theories explain how and when the Halloween custom of trick-or-treating actually began. One theory suggests that Halloween (Samhain) is a pre-Christian Celtic quarter day that marked New Year’s Eve (NYE) until the calendar shifted around. Jan. NYE visits became Christianized, but not Oct. Samhain.

Costumes and blackened faces fooled Otherworld spirits that broke through the veil between worlds—it thins on all four quarter days. On Samhuin and NYE, groups of guisers performed plays in homes they visited. They received treats of food as rewards. Adults performed traditional plays while children only recited a short rhyme.

Many researchers, such as David Skal (Death Makes a Holiday) and Jack Santino (Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life), have attempted to track down the history of trick-or-treating and have discovered that trick-or-treating, as we know it today, may be only 100 years old, if that, and that it didn’t really solidify as an American cultural event until after WWII. Others assert that the tradition of trick-or-treating relates most closely to old urban Thanksgiving traditions of costumes and pranks. This “ragamuffin” tradition became popular in urban areas like New York and Boston, where costumed children paraded around the streets, begged for coins or treats, and pulled pranks when they didn’t get anything.

Shopkeepers often ‘bought off’ these pranksters, trading some sweet snacks or bread loaves for security from soaped windows or pilfered shop signs. By the early 1900s, these children paraded through the streets in their costumes, establishing an event, the ‘ragamuffin parade.’ However, spectacle parades like the Macy’s parade began to overrun these prankster traditions in the 1920s and the Depression of the 1930s, rubbing the begging traditions out.

Instead, Halloween became the new time for tricks and treats—and as the treats became scarce, the tricks turned into vandalism. Things got out of control in the 1930s, with several brawls and acts of violence associated with Halloween pranking. To counter this, homes started to offer parties for children as an incentive to curb vandalism. They offered candy and treats, in other words, literally to stop children from misbehaving on Halloween.

After a slowdown in WWII (when sugar was severely rationed), the post-WWII baby boom solidified modern trick-or-treating. The manufacturing spirit of the 1950s bolstered this tradition, which saw the first real bags of bite-sized candy treats readily available for eager trick-or-treaters. Many say that trick-or-treating on Hallowe’en originated in Scotland.

The people in Scotland have celebrated the tradition of Hallowe’en for hundreds of years. Children often dressed up in costume and went “guising,” which comes from the word disguise. The Scottish Gaelic word for Hallowe’en is Samhain—pronounced “sowain.” The children also carved out lanterns from a turnip “swede” or “rutabaga” to resemble a scary face. The children went around the neighborhood, carrying their turnip lantern on a piece of string, and knocked on doors to say, “Please help the guisers.”

The kids would need to sing a song or say a poem or tell a joke to receive sweets, fruit, nuts, or money. After they guised, they would go home and put some nuts and fruit in a basin of water. With their hands behind their back, they would attempt to lift the fruit and nuts out of the water with their mouths. People called this “dookin” and sometimes called it “dookin fer aiples” (dookin for apples).

These traditions still thrive today in Scotland, although many children now say “trick-or-treat” instead of “please help the guisers” since they see this on TV and in American movies. The children do not, however, play tricks on the neighbors; they still have to recite a verse or sing a song for their reward. People often boil and mash the inside of the turnip lantern instead of wasting it.

They serve it with mashed potatoes and haggis—a traditional sausage made from sheep’s stomach, oatmeal, onions, and lamb offal. The Scots call this dish “haggis, neeps and tatties.” They always serve this dish up on the National Poetry Day—Robert Burns—on the anniversary of his death on 25th January. Another theory is that people started trick-or-treating around the 1910s but really perfected it during the 40s and 50s. During the 1910s, the children were supposed to say a rhyme (i.e., trick-or-treat), and whoever gave out treats or left them on the step would either get a trick or a treat. Usually, if there were not treats, that person or home would get a trick, and it was usually a bad one. Yet another explanation for trick-or-treating is that it comes from “souling.”

In “BC Ireland”, the poor would go from home to home and pray for each family’s dead, and the families would give them small cakes to eat. Halloween was a night of great evil and supernatural forces. Samhain summoned spirits or demons who performed great but terrible rituals. The meaning of TRICK OR TREAT, which in Greek means sorcery of the darkness, may also be used to keep away the bad spirits. People from Ireland first invented trick-or-treating when a famine struck and people went door to door and asked for treats. Later, people continued this practice and gave real treats such as candies instead of potatoes.

Content for this question contributed by Carmella Parente, resident of Albany, New York, USA