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"Jingle
bells,
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg."
Trick or Treat!
The custom of 'trick or treat' probably
has several origins. Again mostly Irish.An old Irish peasant practice
called for going door to door to collect money, bread cake, cheese, eggs,
butter, nuts, apples, etc., in preparation for the festival of St. Columbus
Kill. Yet another custom was the begging for soul cakes, or offerings for one's
self - particularly in exchange for promises of prosperity or protection
against bad luck. It is with this custom the concept of the fairies
came to be incorporated as people used to go door to door begging for treats. Failure to supply the
treats would usually result in practical jokes being visited on the
owner of the house.
Play
trick or treat, click here
Since the fairies were abroad on this night, an
offering of food or milk was frequently left for them on the steps of
the house, so the houseowner could gain the blessings of the "good folk"
for the coming year. Many of the households would also leave out a "dumb
supper" for the spirits of the departed.
Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge, ii,
370, states that in parts of Count Waterford: 'Hallow E'en is called
oidhche na h-aimléise, "The night of mischief or con". It was a custom
which survives still in places -- for the "boys" to assemble in gangs,
and, headed by a few horn-blowers who were always selected for their
strength of lungs, to visit all the farmers' houses in the district
and levy a sort of blackmail, good humouredly asked for, and as cheerfully
given. They afterward met at some point of rendezvous, and in merry revelry celebrated
the festival of Samhain in their own way. When the distant winding of
the horns was heard, the bean a' tigh [woman of the house] got prepared
for their reception, and also for the money or builín (white bread)
to be handed to them through the half-opened door. There was always a race amongst them to get possession of the latch. Whoever heard the
wild scurry of their rush through a farm-yard to the kitchen-door -- will not question the propriety of the word aimiléis [mischief] applied
to their proceedings. The leader of the band chaunted a sort of recitative
in Gaelic, intoning it with a strong nasal twang to conceal his identity,
in which the good-wife was called upon to do honour to Samhain..." According
to Tad Tuleja's essay, "Trick or Treat: Pre-Texts and Contexts," in
Santino's previously mentioned anthology,Halloween's modern trick or
treating (primarily children going door-to-door, begging for candy)
began fairly recently in the US, as a blend of several ancient and modern influences.
In 19th Century America, rural immigrants from Ireland and Scotland
kept gender-specific Halloween customs from their homelands: girls stayed
indoors and did divination games, while the boys roamed outdoors engaging
in almost equally ritualized pranks, which their elders "blamed" on
the spirits being abroad that night. Its entry into urban world can
probably traced back in mid-19th Century New York, where children called
"ragamuffins" would dress in costumes and beg for pennies from adults
on Thanksgiving Day. Things got nastier with increased urbanization
and poverty in the 1930's. Adults began casting about for ways to control
the previously harmless but now increasingly expensive and dangerous
vandalism of the "boys." Towns and cities began organizing "safe" Halloween
events and householders began giving out bribes to the neighborhood
kids as a way to distract them away from their previous anarchy. The
ragamuffins disappeared or switched their date to Halloween.
Play
trick or treat, click here
The term
"trick or treat," finally appears in print around 1939! Pranks became
even nastier in the 1980's, with widespread poverty existing side-by-side
with obscene greed. Unfortunately, even bored kids in a violence
saturated culture slip all too easily from harmless "decoration" of
their neighbors' houses with shaving cream and toilet paper to serious
vandalism and assaults. Blaming either Neopagans or Halloween for this
is rather like blaming patriots or the Fourth of July for the many firecracker
injuries that happen every year (and which are also combatted by publicly
sponsored events). Given this hazardous backdrop town councils, school
boards
and parents in the 1930's invented this custom as it is being celebrated
today to keep their kids out of trouble.
As far as the custom across
the Atlantic goes, by the mid- 20th century in Ireland and Britain,
the smaller children would dress up and parade to the neighbors' houses,
do little performances, then ask for a reward. American kids seem to
remember this with their chants of "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin
laid an egg," and other classic tunes done for no reason other than
because "it's traditional."
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