Halloween - where did the trick or treat spring from?
Chris Hogan, 8th September 2013, Events
It seems not so long ago that the notion of 'trick or treat' was one that few in the United Kingdom had heard of - except in Hollywood movies. So what happened to catapult Halloween into a major celebration?
Certainly, speaking as someone who grew up in the south of England, the only nod to Halloween that I remember is a few carved pumpkins and scary fancy dress - but even then, Halloween seemed a very poor cousin to Guy Fawkes night.
The other assumption that I'd made was that trick or treat is an American invention, brought to England by those very same Hollywood movies as part of a cultural takeover. That doesn't quite seem to be the case though.
Roots
There seem to be two different sources for Halloween - Celtic/pagan and Christian. Which one is correct is a point of debate that will probably never be resolved, unless time travel is invented. It is most likely that modern-day Halloween is a fusion of the two.
The Celtic festival of Samhain celebrated the dead and is generally accepted as the precursor of Halloween. It was also the equivalent of New Year's Eve as the Celtic year started on 1st November. There were earlier pagan harvest festivals that may have contributed to the development of Samhain.
There is a Christian festival too, All Souls Day on 31st October, where the souls of the departed are remembered as a precursor to All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows' Day) on 1st November, although this may in turn have been influenced by Roman festivals.
Traditions emerging
The customs on All Souls' Day varied across Europe but often included cake baking and sharing, called 'souling', carved root vegetable lanterns and pageants called the 'danse macabre'. So the sharing of treats and fancy dress traditions were emerging in the Middle Ages.
Some studies have concluded that the Christian tradition is the sole source of Halloween on the grounds that there is no evidence of Samhain being connected with the dead before the Christian traditions developed. But this seems flimsy as there is such little written evidence of pagan and Celtic times compared to that of the Christian era.
Early versions of trick or treat
Whatever the history, the key elements of Halloween celebration did include some of the elements of trick or treat around the British Isles, particularly in the Celtic regions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
In Scotland, Wales and Ireland the practice of souling carried on and saw children going from door to door in disguise and being offered fruit, nuts or other food, sometimes money. In Scotland it was referred to as 'guising' or 'galoshans'. They would carry lanterns carved from swede or turnips and sometimes the rewards would be for a performance of some kind.
Take-off in the USA and Canada
These traditions continued across the Atlantic with references to trick or treat, Halloween and even guising, appearing in literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
By the middle of the last century many of those references were coming from Halloween cards and this probably gives the first hint to the real driving force behind the modern festival - commercial gain!
The popularity of Halloween, and trick or treating in particular, in the USA was driven by radio shows, cinema shorts and television when it arrived. Complaints from parents in the 40's and 50's sound very much like those heard in the UK forty years later - that it was a form of mild extortion.
Back to the UK
By the 1980's Halloween began to take off as a more major festival in the UK, influenced by films but also pushed by firms who relished a market for sweets, cards, fake skeletons and all the other accoutrement of today's Halloween.
Cynical though that may be, it is at least untrue to say that trick or treat is a purely American invention, it clearly has roots in traditions that were lost to England.
In the money
Today it's a £315 million pound business (2011 figures) for people selling ghost and ghoul related products, not to mention a welcome shot in the arm for sweet and confectionary manufacturers in the run-up to Christmas.
According to Sainsbury's "the biggest spend is on confectionery, the second biggest is pumpkins and then it's party food and costumes." The traditional swede or turnip 'jack o'lantern' has now completely been replaced by the pumpkin, a native North American species.
It is now the third most lucrative festival, having leapfrogged Valentine's Day to sit behind (of course) Christmas and Easter. Spending is twenty-five times the amount spent in 2001 with much of the influence thought to come from supernatural TV and film blockbusters like Twilight, Harry Potter and The Vampire Diaries.
Should we embrace Halloween?
That question is pretty much moot - if you have children, or have had in the last twenty-five years, you probably wouldn't have been given the choice. But adults are now embracing the fancy dress element too, so it looks like it's here to stay.
If you are putting on any large celebration we hope it goes well and you stay safe - and remeber that you can get event insurance from Insure My Event!
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