What Treats Await behind the Door

Halloween is creeping around the corner and will be here faster than we think. Some trick-or-treating events are sneaking up even faster. With that in mind, we wanted to do a broad blog on how trick-or-treating came about including an entertaining poll on what type of goodies will be available this season! The origins of trick-or-treating, Like most traditions, came from pebble throw and adaptation in the ripple of time. This particular pebble can be traced to old Celts from the Ireland and Scotland area.

The Celtic tradition was called Samhain where Celts would celebrate by protecting themselves and dressing up as evil spirits on October 31st. The reason- Celts believe that this dark period of the year would open up the barrier between the physical and spiritual plane allowing spirits to walk among them. To prevent being attacked, if going outside, they would dress like an evil spirit to go undetected. If the Celts did not want to chance being outside, they would place a table with food in their yard, called mumming, and lock themselves inside.

After converting to Catholicism, the tradition moved from October 31st to November 2nd and was celebrated as All Souls' Day (also known as All Hallows Eve or All Saints Day). The new tradition was called guising where rather than dressing like evil spirits, children would dress up as angels, saints, and still some demons. The act of collecting treats from houses was termed souling. Instead of people being afraid of being attacked and leaving food outside; souling was where children would go door to door asking for treats, soul cakes, in exchange would pray for the souls of the homeowner's dead loved ones. Alternatively in Ireland and Scotland, they exchanged jokes, songs, or poems (known as tricks) for fruit, nuts, coins, or other treats.

The potato famine in the 1820s led to many Irish immigrants moving to North America, bringing along their Halloween traditions. Where the innocent fun of trick-or-treating was enjoyed up until the Depression era and World Wars. At this time, commodities like sugar were scarce and rationed out. The result was tricks became more violent and caused vandalism. Trick-or-treating all but vanished when the tradition was adapted even further to be a community activity in hopes of bringing morale and a sense of unity. Since then, Trick-or-Treating has been a fun activity for most to participate in either walking around collecting goodies or having fun passing them out and seeing all the creative costumes.

For this post, we created a fun poll to ask what types of goodies, by category, are what you enjoy passing out OR like seeing in your bucket/bag. We can't wait to see the results!