'Trick or Treat': A History

Facts from the original

• The term 'trick or treat' is closely associated with the holiday of Halloween.
• The true origins of dressing up in costume and going around to houses to greet anyone who answers with a friendly threat are unknown.
• According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the traditions of Halloween have their origins in Samhain, a festival celebrated by the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland.
• Samhain marked the end of summer and the onset of winter.
• Samhain occurred on a date that corresponds to November 1.
• It was believed that during the Samhain festival the world of the gods was visible to humans.
• The gods took advantage of this visibility by playing tricks on their mortal worshippers.
• Worshippers responded with bonfires on hilltops and sometimes masks and other varied disguises to keep ghosts from being able to recognize them.
• Things tended to get spooky and dangerous around Samhain, with bloody sacrifices and supernatural phenomena abounding.
• In the 8th century CE, All Saints' Day, a somewhat new Christian holiday, was moved from May 13th to November 1st.
• The evening before All Saints' Day became a holy, that is, a hallowed, eve.
• Within a few centuries, Samhain and the eve of All Saints' Day had been merged into a single holiday.
• Protestants of the Reformation and all that came after largely rejected the whole thing.
• The holiday persisted among some communities.
• 19th-century immigrants to the U.S., including many from Ireland, brought their Halloween customs with them.
• Those 19th-century immigrants deserve no small amount of credit for the holiday as it is celebrated in the U.S. today.
• Trick-or-treating took some time to settle in.
• Barry Popik is an independent etymologist and the authority on how the term trick or treat first settled into the lexicon.
• Barry Popik has also uncovered the mysteries behind culturally important terms such as hot dog and Big Apple.
• Barry Popik found the earliest known examples of trick or treat in use.
• Popik's research traces early iterations of the term to the northwestern part of North America, specifically the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
• The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan), 2 Nov. 1923, reported that Halloween passed off very quietly there and that 'treats' not 'tricks' were the order of the evening.
• Red Deer (Alberta) Advocate, 7 Nov. 1924, reported that Halloween night was observed in the usual manner by the young 'bloods' in Penhold, and complained that when school and Memorial Hall were molested with no option for 'Treat or Trick,' it could not see where either fun or trick was enjoyed by the participants.
• A few years later, the phrase is used in a more familiar way.
• T. D. Colcord in Calgary (Alberta) Daily Herald, 3 Nov. 1927, wrote that Halloween was observed circumspectly in town without the usual depredations, that the very young wandered in droves from door to door heavily disguised and demanding 'trick or treat,' and that to treat was to be untricked, with the youthful hold-up men returning home bowed down with treats.
• Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald, 4 Nov. 1927, described Halloween as an opportunity for real strenuous fun, with no real damage except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., and with youthful tormentors at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word 'trick or treat,' to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.
• The first U.S. example Popik reports is from Michigan and uses the plural form.
• Bay City (Michigan) Times, 1 Nov. 1928, ran the headline 'Trick or Treats?' and described peaceful citizens living in terror of being summoned to their front doors to hear the fatal ultimatum 'Tricks or treats!' uttered in a merciless tone by a small child clutching a small chunk of soap capable of eliminating the transparency from windows.
• The earliest example in Merriam-Webster's files is from 12 years after the Michigan example.
• John Valentine, in a letter in American Notes and Queries, March 1942, reported that the local equivalent in Decatur, Illinois, was 'Trick or treat,' that children masked and in costume knocked at front doors and greeted the host with 'Trick or treat!' in a somewhat disguised voice, and that the proposal was a mild kind of blackmail in which the treats were always forthcoming.
• The 1942 letter was responding to an article entitled 'Halloween: Shell Out.'
• Shell out was another phrase employed in the same context.
• Trick or treat as a set phrase had yet to fully gel as late as 1965.
• In 1965, in a Peanuts cartoon, Charles Schulz has Lucy engaged in the activity with the words 'TRICKS OR TREATS...' in the speech bubble hovering above her.
• In 1972, a Merriam-Webster editor wrote a note objecting to the defining of trick or treat as 'the Halloween practice' rather than 'a Halloween practice.'
• The editor argued that the beginning word 'the' made it sound like a universal practice and noted never hearing of it when a child in southern Illinois, suggesting 'a' instead.
• The definition was revised accordingly.