Talk:Trick-or-treating

Scotland
the children are only supposed to receive treats if they perform tricks'-treat''? Andy G 17:37 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This article's introduction is poorly written. Sounds more like a sixth grader wrote it. It could use a rewrite. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.73.75.192 (talk) 13:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The trick FOR treat practice derives from trick OR treat, appearing in isolated accounts in the U.S. just a couple of years after the invention of the phrase in the early 1930s. The "trick" of the phrase originally meant "prank," but as Halloween pranking was forgotten, some homeowners (to interact with their young visitors) began demanding a "trick"--meaning a "stunt." I recall those demands in the late 1950s in Southern California and being confused by them: "Trick or treat" to me was meaningless; it was just something I'd been told to say to get candy.--Bentruwe 19:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It's called guising. The article's a bit misleading by mentioning "trick" here; I'll see what I can do about that. Mendor 13:30, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"It originated in Great Britain and Ireland and is still popular in many parts of Scotland, England, and Ireland"
 * Dit it, and is it!? Most people I know think of it as very much an 'American import' and not all British. Mintguy
 * It's Celtic, not British. Guising is the original form. The only reason it exist in America is because of the Scottish and Irish emigrants who took it there. — 62.6.139.10 07:24, 1 November 2005
 * At its narrowest, "British" refers to the pre-Anglo-Saxon Celts of Great Britain, represented by their modern descendants, the Welsh and the Cornish. It is generally extended now to the mixed Celtic/Germanic inhabitants of Great Britain, the Scots just as much as the English. Sometimes extended to include the Irish as well (e.g. the British Isles). Koro Neil (talk) 06:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

-As a Scottish lass, we had some Southern Irish neighbours move beside us in Inverness. The Irish children had a different take on Guising, which was to sing a mildly unflattering song ie 'Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something nice to eat!" This seems to be more like the American take on Halloween, whereas in Scotland, you can only expect to get your treat if you have a) performed to a good enough standard and b) made polite small talk with your neighbours. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nextinthequeue (talk • contribs) 15:08, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It can't be British, surely. The British would never beg the neighbours for anything - its only the state they sponge off! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.26.234 (talk) 17:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree - some kids here in AU where i live came to my door trick or treating - i gave them some chocolate but i was seriously tempted to say "This is not the USA and could you find someone else to annoy?" PMA 13:33, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC) (I like kids, i really do!)


 * growing up in England in the 1970's, I don't remember seeing trick or treat, or very much fuss over Halloween until the 1980's. I did see children going from door to door with a Guy Fawkes figure in a wheelbarrow. They would ask "penny for the guy?" The reason we didn't bother with Halloween was probably because it had been replaced by "Guy Fawkes Night" 5 days later, sometime in the 17th Century. Halloween would have been far too Catholic for a protestant nation and it was probably conveniently buried. Yes it was re-imported in the 1980s and was probably disliked because it began to displace the more traditional (if rather sectarian) English festival. All the trappings of Halloween, the earlier Saxon Wassailing, and the earlier still Samhain had been subsumed into Guy Fawkes night and that was when we did things like lighting bonfires, burning effigies, bobbing for apples and setting off Fireworks77.101.245.56 (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2021 (UTC)


 * There is no evidence to support the claim that trick-or-treating was brought to America. The earliest known instance of ritual begging on Halloween in English-speaking America is from 1915, seventy years after the peak of Irish immigration to America. It did not become a widespread practice until the mid-1930s. And when it did arise in America, it was not in those areas of the United States that had the highest concentrations of Irish Americans or Scottish Americans, but in the West and Midwest. The existance of similar practices on each side of the Atlantic does not mean one was the origin of the other. — Walloon 12:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I grew up in Scotland in the 1930's and I don't remember Halloween being celebrated, and by the way Christmas wasn't celebrated here either. You know, we Scots invented everything from the wheel to the moon landing. But Halloween getting more popular due to American popular culture.83.70.163.125 18:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)--Nextinthequeue (talk) 15:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There is possibly some confusion of Halloween with Bonfire Night Celebrations, on Bonfire Night an effigy of the pope is burned and there is the tradition of people making the guy and of children parading it around - it's a Protestant tradition on the anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot more in common with the Orangemen's marches celebrating the victory at the Battle of the Boyne. Christmas and Easter of course wasn't celebrated in Reformed Churches and until the 18th century in the Church of England because the date of Jesus's birth wasn't given in the Bible and they had not been ordained in the Bible as something to be celebrated, although Reformed Churches did adopt the Lord's Day, these days though even the Free Church of Scotland is celebrating Christmas leaving only The Free Church Continuing and Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland left maintaining the Orthodox Protestant position among Reformed denominations.--Lord of the Isles 20:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not really of Irish or British origin. It originally came out of "souling", a European tradation, where the young poor would dress up, knock on the doors of the better off, and offer prayers for the souls departed, and then might be treated to a little gift of food or money. This very practice is documented in Dublin journals in the 17th centuary. Taramoon 22:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Trick-or-treating is called "ritual begging" by ethnographers; it's been invented and reinvented many times, in many cultures, including ancient Greece. There was no trick-or-treating in the U.S. until the 1930s; "proto"trick-or-treating began in the 1910s. Proto-trick-or-treating lacks one or more of the elements: costumes, going door to door, asking for a treat, a ritualized (if unwitting) threat of damage. Under the pressures of the Depression, ritualized begging was independently invented in many places in the U.S.; in the initial years, children said different things in different places: "Handout!" "Nuts! We want nuts!" "Anything for Halloween?" The phrase "trick or treat" (possibly invented by an anonymous Portland Oregonian news writer in 1934) caught on, sweeping across the country over the next twenty years. When the practice was finally turned into an industry it was ripe for export to other countries.--Bentruwe 19:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Halloween is certainly NOT an American invention, nor is the begging tradition associated with it. If I cared enough, I'd clean up the wild inaccuracies of this article. Has anyone else detected the sublte anti-Irish bias of this article both in relation to the origins of Halloween and trick or treating? It is well settled that Halloween evolved from the celtic festival Samhain and was purposely co-opted by the Church and subsumed into the All Saints celebrations. Being from Ireland (Co. Ciarrai), I can assure we had trick or treating in the 60s and 70s and my grandparents attest to it being part of the Irish Halloween tradition well before that. We followed the trick for treat model where we would perform a song, poem or joke for the treat. — 12.37.61.2 16:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC


 * This article does not say that Halloween was an American invention. It says there is no evidence that trick-or-treating was brought over to America by immigrants, and it says that trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any ritual begging analogues in Ireland or Britain. Keep in mind that the peak of Irish immigration to America was during the Famine in the 1840s. Yet except for isolated references in 1915 and 1920, the earliest known practices of trick-or-treating in America were not until 90 years later, in the 1930s. And it didn't arise in the Eastern states, the area of the country with the highet concentrations of Irish Americans, but in the West and Midwest. As I wrote above, the existance of similar practices on each side of the Atlantic does not mean one was the origin of the other.


 * Also, there is no documentary evidence that Samhain was "purposely" co-opted by the Catholic Church by the placement of All Hallows (All Saints) Day. Read the section in the Halloween article on the origins of All Saints Day, which originated as a strictly local holy day in Rome, and was later expanded churchwide. — Walloon 23:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

AIUI the "treat" part of the trick or treat was part of the old European custom. The Americans added the "trick" part all by themselves. Because it's been seen on American TV shows it is now being imported back into the UK but the older teenager's idea of a "trick" can be very puzzling or even threatening to older people who don't watch American TV shows. The "trick or treat" can be seen as a form of "demanding money with menaces" -- SteveCrook 13:53, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

St. Louis "Tricks"
I'm from St. Louis and grew up in the 1960's. We were not expected to simply tell a joke - we were expected to do a trick. I can remember turning somersaults, singing songs, dancing, doing imitations - whatever. But not everyone required it (most did not) and usually it caught us unprepared. It wasn't like we planned a.) our costume and b.) our act. Through the years, though, telling a joke became easier, mainly as kids lost imagination and the desire to showoff; "tricks" - as we knew them - simply degenerated into Laffy Taffy wrappers. Mrbentley (talk) 15:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * In addition to that, Judy Garland's film 'Meet me in St Louis' is a (I think) post-war film but set in 1900. Margaret O Brien plays a small child, Tootie who goes 'Trick or Treating'. This is the American-style trick or treat - as I recall, Tootie throws flour at an aggressive home owner. I don't know how much historical research was done on the part of the producers of the film though!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nextinthequeue (talk • contribs) 14:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 10:14, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Scooped out turnips
This surely refers to Swedes/Rutabagas and should be made clear as hollowing out a turnip would be a bit of a fruitless task.Muleattack (talk) 17:49, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Ha...the definition of a swede v turnip depends on who you are speaking to: to me, it is a swede - but I'm from South Wales. To me wife, a native of the most northern tip of the UK near John O'Groats, it is a turnip :-)

DaioftheTriffids (talk) 23:27, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

What the Article Should Say
People tend to make the main rule about trick-or-treating say that you have to look and talk like how a child does rather than be in a young age group. (Those people say that Halloween is for “little kids” which means whomever looks and talks that way.) Cbsteffen (talk) 21:23, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

First appearance in North America.
I've never edited an article before and don't want to make a change in case I make a mistake. But I found an earlier reference to trick or treating then 1911. A Vancouver Daily World newspaper from 1898. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/halloween 24.207.100.169 (talk) 03:15, 2 November 2023 (UTC)