Trick or Treat

Did you know?

The story of trick-or-treating goes back over 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), when people believed spirits roamed the earth on October 31st. Families left food out to appease the roaming spirits — the earliest form of “treating” to prevent mischief!

In medieval England and Ireland, Catholicism reinvented the festival into “souling” — people, especially the poor, went door to door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for “soul cakes.” Later, in Scotland and Ireland, children dressed in disguise and performed songs or jokes for coins or sweets — a custom called “guising.”

When Irish and Scottish immigrants brought these traditions to America in the 1800s, they mixed with local Halloween pranks like soaping windows and tipping wagons. Communities began organizing city wide parties and parades to curtail the mischief.

The phrase “trick or treat” first appeared in print in 1927 in Canada and spread quickly. By the 1950s, after WWII sugar rationing ended, candy companies turned Halloween into the sweet tradition we know today!