Trick-or-treating is a central Halloween tradition. Homeowners in neighborhoods with children are generally expected to have candy ready for the influx of trick-or-treaters. In 2023, the National Confectioners Association found that 80% of American adults planned to distribute confections to trick-or-treaters, while 93% of children intended to go door-to-door collecting them.
The practice of dressing up in costumes and going door-to-door to beg for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages, including the tradition of Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating is similar to the late medieval practice of "souling," where the poor would visit homes on Hallowmas (November 1st) in exchange for food, offering prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2nd). This custom originated in Ireland and Britain, though comparable practices for honoring the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare even references this tradition in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas."
There is no evidence that souling was practiced in North America, and trick-or-treating may have developed independently, with little primary documentation of Halloween masking or costuming in Ireland, the UK, or America before 1900.
The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English-speaking North America dates back to 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it was common for young children to go "street guising" on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting local shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their recited rhymes and songs. Another reference appears, though the location is unknown, in 1915, and a third reference is found in Chicago in 1920. However, the thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly depict children but do not show the practice of trick-or-treating.
In her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe'en, Ruth Edna Kelley makes no mention of the practice of trick-or-treating in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America." This custom does not appear to have become widespread in the United States until the 1930s. The earliest known use of the term "trick or treat" in print was not until 1927, and the first national publication reference was not until 1939. Despite significant waves of Scots-Irish, Irish, and British immigration to America in the 18th and 19th centuries, ritualized Halloween begging was virtually unknown in the country until much later.
Trick-or-treating spread from the western United States eastward, but was stalled during World War II by sugar rationing that began in April 1942 and did not end until June 1947. While some popular histories have claimed trick-or-treating was an adult invention to redirect Halloween activities away from vandalism, the historical record does not support this theory. In fact, newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s show that adults typically viewed trick-or-treating as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to outright anger.
On radio shows, children were often depicted explaining the concept of trick-or-treating to perplexed adults, rather than the other way around. In some cases, even the children themselves resisted the tradition - for instance, in 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner proclaiming "American Boys Don't Beg" to protest the practice.
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