Trick-or-treating
Trick-or-treating is a customary practice for children on Halloween seen in many countries. Children in costumes, either in large groups or accompanied by an adult, travel from house to house in order to ask for treats such as candy (or, in some cultures,money) with the question "Trick or treat?". The "trick" is a (usually idle) threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given.
In North America, trick-or-treating has been a customary Halloween tradition since at least the late 1950s. Homeowners wishing to participate in it usually decorate their private entrance with plastic spiderwebs, paper skeletons and jack-o-lanterns. Some rather reluctant homeowners would simply leave the candy in pots on the porch, others might be more participative and would even ask an effort from the children in order to provide them with candy. In the more recent years, however, the practice has spread to almost any house within a neighborhood being visited by children, including senior residences and condominiums.
The tradition of going from door to door receiving food already existed in Britain and Ireland, in the form of souling, where children and poor people would sing and say prayers for the dead in return for cakes.[1] Guising — children disguised in costumes going from door to door for food and coins — also predates trick or treat, and was traditional at Halloween by the 19th century in Scotland and Ireland.[2] While going from door to door has remained popular among Scots and Irish, the North American custom of saying "trick or treat" has recently become common. The activity is prevalent in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada,Ireland, Puerto Rico, and northwestern and central Mexico.
In the latter, this practice is called calaverita (Spanish for "little skull"), and instead of "trick or treat", the children ask ¿me da mi calaverita? ("can you give me my little skull?"); where a calaverita is a small skull made of sugar or chocolate.
Origin
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmaswassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain,[1] although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.[3] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas."[4] The custom of wearing costumes and masksat Halloween goes back to Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white.[5][6]
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book length history of the holiday in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America";
The taste in Hallowe'en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Burn's poem Hallowe'en as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe'en is out of fashion now.[7]
Kelley lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, a town with 4,500 Irish immigrants, 1,900 English immigrants, and 700 Scottish immigrants in 1920.[8] In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Hallowe'en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".[9]
At the time of substantial transatlantic Scottish and Irish immigration that brought the holiday to North America in the 19th century, Halloween in Scotland and Ireland had a strong tradition of "guising" — Scottish and Irish children disguised in costumes going from door to door requesting food or coins.[2]
The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street "guising" (see below) on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs.[10] Another isolated reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.[11]
The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, from Blackie, Alberta, Canada:
Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.[12]
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating.[13] The editor of a collection of over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards writes, "There are cards which mention the custom [of trick-or-treating] or show children in costumes at the doors, but as far as we can tell they were printed later than the 1920s and more than likely even the 1930s. Tricksters of various sorts are shown on the early postcards, but not the means of appeasing them".[14] Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the first U.S. appearances of the term in 1934,[15] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[16]
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