TRICK-OR-TREATING
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(Redirected from Trick or treating)
'Trick-or-treating', also known as 'guising', is an activity for children on Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as candy with the question, "Trick or treat?" Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase candy in preparation for trick-or-treaters. The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of adults in America planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters,[1] and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating.[2]
The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, and due to culture importation in recent years has started to occur among children in Australia and New Zealand, in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth — and resistance — is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the "trick" element.[3] [4]
In Sweden children dress up as witches and go trick-or-treating on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) while Danish children dress up in various attires and go trick-or-treating on Fastelavn (or the next day, Shrove Monday).
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of "souling," when poor folk would go door to door, receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (All Hallows Day). It originated in the British Isles, and is still popular in Ireland, and in some parts of England and Scotland.[5] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas."[6]
Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween — in Ireland, the UK, or America — before 1900.[7] The earliest reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English-speaking America occurs in 1915, with another isolated reference in Chicago in 1920.[8] 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.[9] Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, ''The Book of Hallowe'en'', makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America."[10] It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term "trick or treat" appearing in 1934,[11] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[12] Thus, although the first great wave of Irish immigration to America came during the Irish Potato Famine in 1845–1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s,[13] ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.
Trick-or-treating spread from the western United States eastward, stalled by sugar rationing that began in April 1942 during World War II and did not end until June 1947.[14]
Early national attention to trick-or-treating was given in October 1947 issues of the children's magazines ''Jack and Jill'' and ''Children's Activities'', and by Halloween episodes of the network radio programs ''The Baby Snooks Show'' in 1946 and ''The Jack Benny Show'' and ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'' in 1948.[15] The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon ''Trick or Treat'', and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.[16]
Although some popular histories of Halloween have characterized trick-or-treating as an adult invention to rechannel Halloween activities away from vandalism, nothing in the historical record supports this theory. To the contrary, adults, as reported in newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger (the "trick" part of "trick or treat" was a threat to prank). Likewise, as portrayed on radio shows, children would have to explain what trick-or-treating was to puzzled adults, and not the other way around. Sometimes even the children protested: for Halloween 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read "American Boys Don't Beg."[17]
In Scotland and parts of northern England, a similar traition is called ''guising'' because of the disguise or costume worn by the children. Like trick-or-treating, it arose as a Halloween practice only in the twentieth century. However there is a significant difference from the way the practice has developed in the United States. In Scotland, the children are only supposed to receive treats if they perform for the households they go to. This normally take the form of singing a song or reciting a joke or a funny poem which the child has memorized before setting out. Occasionally a more talented child may do card tricks, play the mouth organ, or something even more impressive, but most children will earn plenty of treats even with something very simple. However, guising is falling out of favour somewhat, being replaced in some parts of the country with the American form of trick-or-treating.
In modern Ireland there is neither the Scottish party-piece nor the American jocular threat, just "treats" — in the form of apples or nuts given out to the children. However, in 19th and early 20th century Ireland it was often much more extravagant — for example, slates were placed over the chimney-pots of houses filling the rooms with smoke and field gates were lifted off their hinges and hung from high tree branches.
Until the 1990s, Irish children said "Help the Halloween Party," but are now more inclined to use the American "Trick or treat" due to the influence of American popular culture, movies, and television.
In Quebec, Canada, children also go door to door on Halloween. However, in French speaking neighbourhoods, instead of "Trick or treat?", they will simply say "Halloween", though in tradition it used to be ''La charité s'il-vous-plaît'' (Charity, please).
★ Halloween
★ Halloween costume
★ Hop-tu-Naa
★ Poisoned candy scare
★ Samhain
★ Fastelavn
1. Trick-or-treaters can expect Mom or Dad’s favorites in their bags this year, National Confectioners Association, 2005.
2. Fun Facts: Halloween, National Confectioners Association, 2004.
3. Halloween pranks could cost parents, BBC, 16 Oct. 2003; Halloween pranks will be punished, BBC, 27 Oct. 2004.
4. Trick or treaters given a warning, BBC, 23 Oct. 2006; Posters to stop trick or treaters, BBC, 25 Oct. 2006.
5. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, , Nicholas, Rogers, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-514691-3
6. Act 2, Scene 1.
7. Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, , David J., Skal, Bloomsbury, 2002, ISBN 1-58234-230-X
8. Theo. E. Wright, "A Halloween Story," ''St. Nicholas'', October 1915, p. 1144. Mae McGuire Telford, "What Shall We Do Halloween?" ''Ladies Home Journal'', October 1920, p. 135.
9. For examples, see the websites Postcard & Greeting Card Museum: Halloween Gallery, Antique Hallowe'en Postcards, Vintage Halloween Postcards, and Morticia's Morgue Antique Halloween Postcards. G & L Postcards has published a CD-ROM with over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards.
10. Ruth Edna Kelley, ''The Book of Hallowe'en'', Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1919, chapter 15, "Hallowe'en in America." Kelley lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, a town with about 4,500 Irish immigrants, 1,900 English immigrants, and 700 Scottish immigrants in 1920.
11. "Halloween Pranks Keep Police on Hop," ''Oregon Journal'' (Portland, Oregon), November 1, 1934:
"The Gangsters of Tomorrow", ''The Helena Independent'' (Helena, Montana), November 2, 1934, p. 4:
The ''Chicago Tribune'' also mentioned door-to-door begging in Aurora, Illinois on Halloween in 1934, although not by the term "trick-or-treating."
12. Doris Hudson Moss, "A Victim of the Window-Soaping Brigade?" ''The American Home'', November 1939, p. 48. Moss was a California-based writer. Interestingly, almost all pre-1940 uses of the term "trick-or-treat" are from the western United States.
13. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Decennial Immigration to the United States, 1880–1919.
14. "One Lump Please", ''Time'', March 30, 1942. "Decontrolled", ''Time'', June 23, 1947.
15. ''The Baby Snooks Show'', November 1, 1946, and ''The Jack Benny Show'', October 31, 1948, both originating from NBC Radio City in Hollywood; and ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'', October 31, 1948, originating from CBS Columbia Square in Hollywood.
16. "A Barrel of Fun for Halloween Night," ''Parents Magazine'', October 1953, p. 140. "They're Changing Halloween from a Pest to a Project," ''The Saturday Evening Post'', October 12, 1957, p. 10.
17. Recalled a decade later by Martin Tolchin, "Halloween A Challenge To Parents," ''The New York Times'', October 27, 1958, p. 35.
★ Ben Truwe, ''The Halloween Catalog Collection''. Portland, Oregon: Talky Tina Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9703448-5-6. Contains a particularly well-documented history of trick-or-treating in America.
A "trick-or-treater" in Michigan in 1979.
'Trick-or-treating', also known as 'guising', is an activity for children on Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as candy with the question, "Trick or treat?" Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase candy in preparation for trick-or-treaters. The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of adults in America planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters,[1] and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating.[2]
The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, and due to culture importation in recent years has started to occur among children in Australia and New Zealand, in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth — and resistance — is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the "trick" element.[3] [4]
In Sweden children dress up as witches and go trick-or-treating on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) while Danish children dress up in various attires and go trick-or-treating on Fastelavn (or the next day, Shrove Monday).
| Contents |
| History |
| Guising |
| See also |
| References |
| Further reading |
History
Photograph of Halloween-themed Hush Puppies plush basset hound holding a trick-or-treat bag in its mouth.
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of "souling," when poor folk would go door to door, receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (All Hallows Day). It originated in the British Isles, and is still popular in Ireland, and in some parts of England and Scotland.[5] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas."[6]
Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween — in Ireland, the UK, or America — before 1900.[7] The earliest reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English-speaking America occurs in 1915, with another isolated reference in Chicago in 1920.[8] 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.[9] Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, ''The Book of Hallowe'en'', makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America."[10] It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term "trick or treat" appearing in 1934,[11] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[12] Thus, although the first great wave of Irish immigration to America came during the Irish Potato Famine in 1845–1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s,[13] ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.
Trick-or-treating spread from the western United States eastward, stalled by sugar rationing that began in April 1942 during World War II and did not end until June 1947.[14]
Early national attention to trick-or-treating was given in October 1947 issues of the children's magazines ''Jack and Jill'' and ''Children's Activities'', and by Halloween episodes of the network radio programs ''The Baby Snooks Show'' in 1946 and ''The Jack Benny Show'' and ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'' in 1948.[15] The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon ''Trick or Treat'', and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.[16]
Trick-or-treating on the prairie
Although some popular histories of Halloween have characterized trick-or-treating as an adult invention to rechannel Halloween activities away from vandalism, nothing in the historical record supports this theory. To the contrary, adults, as reported in newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger (the "trick" part of "trick or treat" was a threat to prank). Likewise, as portrayed on radio shows, children would have to explain what trick-or-treating was to puzzled adults, and not the other way around. Sometimes even the children protested: for Halloween 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read "American Boys Don't Beg."[17]
Guising
In Scotland and parts of northern England, a similar traition is called ''guising'' because of the disguise or costume worn by the children. Like trick-or-treating, it arose as a Halloween practice only in the twentieth century. However there is a significant difference from the way the practice has developed in the United States. In Scotland, the children are only supposed to receive treats if they perform for the households they go to. This normally take the form of singing a song or reciting a joke or a funny poem which the child has memorized before setting out. Occasionally a more talented child may do card tricks, play the mouth organ, or something even more impressive, but most children will earn plenty of treats even with something very simple. However, guising is falling out of favour somewhat, being replaced in some parts of the country with the American form of trick-or-treating.
In modern Ireland there is neither the Scottish party-piece nor the American jocular threat, just "treats" — in the form of apples or nuts given out to the children. However, in 19th and early 20th century Ireland it was often much more extravagant — for example, slates were placed over the chimney-pots of houses filling the rooms with smoke and field gates were lifted off their hinges and hung from high tree branches.
Until the 1990s, Irish children said "Help the Halloween Party," but are now more inclined to use the American "Trick or treat" due to the influence of American popular culture, movies, and television.
In Quebec, Canada, children also go door to door on Halloween. However, in French speaking neighbourhoods, instead of "Trick or treat?", they will simply say "Halloween", though in tradition it used to be ''La charité s'il-vous-plaît'' (Charity, please).
See also
★ Halloween
★ Halloween costume
★ Hop-tu-Naa
★ Poisoned candy scare
★ Samhain
★ Fastelavn
References
1. Trick-or-treaters can expect Mom or Dad’s favorites in their bags this year, National Confectioners Association, 2005.
2. Fun Facts: Halloween, National Confectioners Association, 2004.
3. Halloween pranks could cost parents, BBC, 16 Oct. 2003; Halloween pranks will be punished, BBC, 27 Oct. 2004.
4. Trick or treaters given a warning, BBC, 23 Oct. 2006; Posters to stop trick or treaters, BBC, 25 Oct. 2006.
5. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, , Nicholas, Rogers, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-514691-3
6. Act 2, Scene 1.
7. Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, , David J., Skal, Bloomsbury, 2002, ISBN 1-58234-230-X
8. Theo. E. Wright, "A Halloween Story," ''St. Nicholas'', October 1915, p. 1144. Mae McGuire Telford, "What Shall We Do Halloween?" ''Ladies Home Journal'', October 1920, p. 135.
9. For examples, see the websites Postcard & Greeting Card Museum: Halloween Gallery, Antique Hallowe'en Postcards, Vintage Halloween Postcards, and Morticia's Morgue Antique Halloween Postcards. G & L Postcards has published a CD-ROM with over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards.
10. Ruth Edna Kelley, ''The Book of Hallowe'en'', Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1919, chapter 15, "Hallowe'en in America." Kelley lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, a town with about 4,500 Irish immigrants, 1,900 English immigrants, and 700 Scottish immigrants in 1920.
11. "Halloween Pranks Keep Police on Hop," ''Oregon Journal'' (Portland, Oregon), November 1, 1934:
Other young goblins and ghosts, employing modern shakedown methods, successfully worked the "trick or treat" system in all parts of the city.
"The Gangsters of Tomorrow", ''The Helena Independent'' (Helena, Montana), November 2, 1934, p. 4:
Pretty Boy John Doe rang the door bells and his gang waited his signal. It was his plan to proceed cautiously at first and give a citizen every opportunity to comply with his demands before pulling any rough stuff. "Madam, we are here for the usual purpose, 'trick or treat.'" This is the old demand of the little people who go out to have some innocent fun. Many women have some apples, cookies or doughnuts for them, but they call rather early and the "treat" is given out gladly.
The ''Chicago Tribune'' also mentioned door-to-door begging in Aurora, Illinois on Halloween in 1934, although not by the term "trick-or-treating."
12. Doris Hudson Moss, "A Victim of the Window-Soaping Brigade?" ''The American Home'', November 1939, p. 48. Moss was a California-based writer. Interestingly, almost all pre-1940 uses of the term "trick-or-treat" are from the western United States.
13. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Decennial Immigration to the United States, 1880–1919.
14. "One Lump Please", ''Time'', March 30, 1942. "Decontrolled", ''Time'', June 23, 1947.
15. ''The Baby Snooks Show'', November 1, 1946, and ''The Jack Benny Show'', October 31, 1948, both originating from NBC Radio City in Hollywood; and ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'', October 31, 1948, originating from CBS Columbia Square in Hollywood.
16. "A Barrel of Fun for Halloween Night," ''Parents Magazine'', October 1953, p. 140. "They're Changing Halloween from a Pest to a Project," ''The Saturday Evening Post'', October 12, 1957, p. 10.
17. Recalled a decade later by Martin Tolchin, "Halloween A Challenge To Parents," ''The New York Times'', October 27, 1958, p. 35.
Further reading
★ Ben Truwe, ''The Halloween Catalog Collection''. Portland, Oregon: Talky Tina Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9703448-5-6. Contains a particularly well-documented history of trick-or-treating in America.
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