Why Do We Give Out Candy on Halloween?

Facts from the original

• The ancient Celts hung apples on evergreen branches every Samhain to encourage the return of their sun deity.
• Apples were not the only Samhain offerings the Celts gave.
• According to journalist Alison Richards, gifts of fruit and nuts, and animal sacrifices, were offered to the gods (source: "The Secret, Steamy History Of Halloween Apples," NPR).
• Anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz, in his 1911 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, noted that Samain was the great Celtic feast of the dead when offerings or sacrifice of various kinds were made to ancestral spirits, and to the Tuatha De Danann and the spirit-hosts under their control.
• The Tuatha Dé Danann are the gods of Irish mythology, known for their supremacy over ghosts and demons on Samain and their power to steal mortals away at such a time, according to Evans-Wentz.
• It was important to make offerings to these gods lest they unleash a fire-breathing, enchanted timpán-playing monster from the Otherworld, which is what happens in the story of Aillén.
• Evans-Wentz relates that Aillén visits Tara, the old psychic centre for Ireland's high-kings and its Druids, coming against the conquerors of his race who in their neglectfulness no longer render due worship and sacrifice on the Feast of Samain to the Tuatha De Danann, the gods of the dead, at that time supreme; then he works his magic against the royal palaces of the kings and Druids on the ancient Hill.
• The explanation that we give out candy because the ancient Celts made offerings of fruits and nuts on Samhain to appease the gods is only half the story.
• After being conquered by the invading Milesians and driven underground, the Tuatha Dé Danann grew smaller in popular imaginations—both literally and figuratively.
• These diminished gods became the aes sídhe—"the people of the hills"—otherwise known as fairies.
• The fairies' connection to Samhain, and their perceived potential for mischief-making, remained strong.
• Later generations of Celtic peoples began leaving sweet treats out on their doorsteps on the evening of October 31st to appease the fairies and whatever demons and restless spirits might be in their company.
• Even after Samhain was (nominally) Christianized, people continued this tradition with a more personal twist: it became less about appeasing sinister fairies and spirits and more about accommodating the homesick souls of loved ones who'd passed on.
• Author and folklorist Florence Marian McNeill explains that all over Europe, the souls of the departed were believed to revisit their old homes on the eve of Allhallows and warm themselves at the fire or regale themselves with the food and drink set out for them by their kinsfolk (source: The Silver Bough Volume Three).
• Eventually, people began leaving out a specific type of sweet treat for the souls that visited on All Hallows Eve: soul cakes.
• Soul cakes were made with raisins, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, and were the forerunner to Halloween candy.
• Samhain was the most important holiday on the ancient Celtic calendar, marking the end of summer and the beginning of a new pastoral year, and a liminal time when the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead is at its thinnest.