The Importance Of Trick Or Treating Tradition In Halloween

Leaves crunched under my feet as I ran from the police officer. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a set of rectangular eyes on a porch. I ran to the door and knocked. “Trick or treat!” A hand reached out and placed a handful of candy corn in my bag. Soon my brother caught up, light from the full moon reflected off his plastic badge. Reaching in my bag I found grabbed some interesting feeling triangular candies and popped them in my mouth. Tonight my candy corn addiction had started.

Halloween: the holiday where as kids we couldn’t wait to go door to door to achieve the golden goal of a full bag of candy. Halloween soon turns into a question mark for teens; in an instant, there is a change of when it is ‘appropriate’ to go trick-or-treating and when you should just move on. Are you the one who thinks Trick-or-treating is lame or the one who still walks around your neighborhood every year -- no matter how many dirty looks you may get. What teenagers decide to do on Halloween varies: going to a party, passing out candy, staying home are a few popular options. Throughout my highschool experience I have been able to witness and experience all different types of halloteens, each with their own traits.

Every year millions of kids get dressed up, knock on doors, and beg for candy. With Halloween just around the corner, you all are probably wondering where this strange tradition came from. Every year I have experienced this holiday and have done research on this topic. According to a 2014 Smithsonian.com article, stated by Natasha Geiling, in just one year Americans spent over six billion dollars on candy, costumes, and ghoulish decor in anticipation for Halloween. Many people think all Halloween is about dressing up and going trick or treating but there's more to it than that. The roots and variations from all around are what makes Halloween what it is today. In order to understand this holiday, we will go into the history of Halloween, how it's celebrated around the world, and superstitions revolving it.

We all remember dressing up for Halloween night as children. Getting together with best friends and competing to see who has the best costume or can collect the most candy. For some, this was the best night of the year. Then there are the children who sit at home and go through the motions of what their parents do. These parents inevitably will carve a generic looking pumpkin and then sit down and hand out candy to kids the remainder of the night. The children that are staying at home with their parents are handing out candy to the kids who are living and enjoying their Halloween. As Mac Hammond in “Halloween” stresses, the children that are out having fun on Halloween are the true

Introduction: Patrons of the season of Halloween spend over $2.5 billion dollars every year on candy, costumes, and decorations. Every year millions of kids get dressed up, knock on doors, and beg for candy. Have you ever wondered where this strange tradition originated? The three most important points of Halloween can be summed up by looking at its origins, how it came to include jack-o-lanterns and bobbing for apples, and how it is celebrated today with trick-or-treating and haunted houses.

Waylon and his older brother Jesse were spending another Halloween pounding the pavement. It was getting dark and cold. Mom and dad sat in the minivan across the street as the kids knocked on doors and did their best to scare the residents of Tucson. Waylon was dressed as SpongeBob, while his big brother had dressed up as a pirate. Of course Jesse was the best he told everyone so.

Celebrated on October 31st, the festival of Halloween (also known as Samhain) includes dressing in costume, trick or treating, and decorating. Tracing back in history Halloween is considered to be one of America’s oldest holidays, and is still celebrated today. Halloween is believed to come from Celtic rituals. Celtics believed the cosmological myth of Saman (Lord of the Dead). Saman would call on the souls of the people that passed away that year to take them to the afterlife or underworld; the Celtic underworld identifies with the Christian Hell. In order for the spirits to believe they were on their own, the living would wear costumes and mask their identities, along with fairies, witches and demons. This functions as a cosmological myth because it provides a creation story and framework in which this universe occupies and includes many other realms of existence. Another tradition that followed was to give food to the Saman, to persuade him to be more tolerant while he judged the dead ancestors of the living, which he would chose to take to the underworld. In this essay I will further investigate what the origins of Halloween consist of and how it offers reasoning for trick-or-treating. Also I will examine how trick-or-treating, which is still continued today, is connected to ancient Celtic festivals.

Vendors got in on the Halloween action, too, dressing up and handing out treats to children. Not all of the goodies were typical Halloween candies, however. As a Teal Pumpkin Project® event, some merchants

These traditions were connected with the lower class at the time and so they were also connected with crime, rowdy behavior and other stereotypes the upper class believed about the poor. Of course people who were part of the upper class did not like this and by the 1870s they had turned Halloween into a holiday to make children into “good American citizens.” Halloween was now targeted towards children and because of that families were encouraged to celebrate it at home where food, games and other entertainment would have adult supervision. By doing this children were expected to understand the values society holds, while also learning about their proper gender roles. At this point we are able to start to see how Halloween became so heavily influenced by gender roles/stereotypes and how that led to the over-sexualized holiday it is now. Trick or treating and wearing Halloween costumes became popular in America around the 1920s and by the 1950s children’s costumes were extremely reflective of their sex. (Bannatyne.) Girls were dressed as princesses and angels while boys were army men, hobos and so on. However, as cute and adorable as this is or may have been, this creates a very thick line between genders. When that line is present it is alluding to children that

Several activities take place in the evening, but the most antipated one by far is going trick-or treating. Both children and adults dress up in costumes and walk from door to door collecting candy from their friends and neighbors. This ritual is from Samhain, an ancient Celtic gala that marked the end of the harvest season and the start of a new year. The Celts thought that the spirits left their world to interact with the living and so wore disgues and made food offerings to try to appease them. Bobbing for apples is another modern-day Halloween custom that has Celtic roots. Apples were the fruit of death. The Celts believed that the departed had to undergo two trials before they could make it to heaven. “The water ordeal is the familiar bobbing for apples, while the fire ordeal involves trying to take a bite out of an apple attached to a hanging stick which also bears a lit candle” (Kondratiev, par. 12). Playing this game attuned the dead to the needs of the living over the course of the following

C. Thesis Statement: Going from what the meaning of Halloween is in America today and looking back at it’s roots, it has evolved dramatically. And just recently we have been seeing a comeback from one of those roots, but do we know it’s real cultural significance?

Halloween, a holiday many of us know and love. A day when we celebrate together with our friends, family, neighbors and community. We go from door to door collecting candy, sweets and much more, racing on who can approach the most houses or who can collect the most candy in the group. It is all fun and games when trick or treating, and it has evolved into so much more than from the past. As years pass by, we celebrate this holiday annually, but of everything we’ve taken in from being children through our teen and adult years, do we truly know the background of Halloween Day?

Halloween has gone through many changes since it first began. Once, Halloween was a grave time and considered a foreboding sign of the coming of winter. However, over the centuries Halloween has been modernized into a fun and festive time of year for many people, especially for Americans. People of all ages are all able to contribute to Halloween. Millions of Americans spend massive amounts of money every year on Halloween decorations, costumes, and candy.

Halloween is just around the corner and many kids are excited. Humans across the United States are preparing for the holiday by buying many things. People are buying costumes for trick or treating, lawn ornaments to put in their yard, and candies such as skittles and m&ms to hand out to kids. Some of the most popular lawn ornaments this year are tombstones, skeletons, and like almost every other year your classic Jack O'Lantern. There are also many new costume ideas this year including super hero and pokemon outfits. Except with the new clown sightings, many parents are worried for their children's safety, causing them to limit their children’s time out on the streets. Also some are choosing not to let their kids go at all.

Borrowing from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money. Over time this tradition turned in to today modern “trick or treating”. In the late 1800s, America turned Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, and witchcraft. As the centuries changed Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century (Kammen).