How Trick-or-Treating Turned Mischief Into a Candy Tradition

History of trick-or-treating: from Samhain to candy

The history of trick-or-treating runs from Celtic bonfires through medieval souling and Guy Fawkes begging to today's $13 billion candy boom

How Trick-or-Treating Turned Mischief Into a Candy Tradition

“Trick or treat” sounds like a playful greeting, but it contains a bargain: give us something, and we will leave your house alone. That bargain helps explain how an activity linked to begging, disguise, and neighborhood mischief became a familiar children’s tradition. The route from prayers for the dead to bags of candy was not direct. It took centuries of changing customs—and a major reshaping in North America—to create the doorstep ritual we r…

Tricking and treating has a history

Over the past few decades, Halloween celebrations have gained in popularity, not only with children and families, but with all those fascinated with the spooky and scary. As a scholar of myth and religion in popular culture, I look at Halloween with particular interest – especially the ways in which today's Halloween tradition came to evolve. A pre-Christian tradition Many practices associate...