Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren bog obam here to grasp the rhyme and reason of why children dawn, ridiculous costumes and bang down doors demanding candy. Once a year, we must rewind the clock a couple of millennia and visit the ancient Celtic clans of Britain. The Celts celebrated the end of fall harvest and the beginning of their new year with the pagan
festival Salween, which fell on November one. On the night before the celebration commenced, the dead were thought to travel back home for their annual visit. To frighten away any accompanying evil spirits, the Celts lit fires around the countryside, and some dressed in disguise when venturing into the eerie outdoors to avoid being recognized by familiar but less than friendly ghosts. Traces of these rituals persisted as these centuries wore on, and even as the Catholic Church sought to
abolish these pagan pastimes. In the eighth century, the Church began commemorating the Feast of All Saints on November one, possibly as a replacement or saween The preceding day became known as All Hallows Eve, which was further shortened to Halloween. As the secular Saween and sacred all Hollows intertwined. The dead spirits that characterized the holiday assumed more negative connotations, hence the modern Halloween icons of scary witches, ghosts, and ghouls.
To appease these evil spirits, people left food and drink outside to protect their homes from spiritual retaliation. Gradually, savvy celebrants took advantage of the tasty offerings by dressing up as the dead and trekking from door to door to ask for provisions in exchange for protection from wicked spirits. According to the American Folk Life Center, the practice, which became known as mumming, served as a precedent for trigger treating.
In England, the poor would organize soul parades to beg for alms on All Hallows Eve and exchange for prayers to deliver dead souls from purgatory to heaven. As the years war on, children took over the tradition, calling themselves solars. Bands of children would knock on doors and sing songs in return for sweet current topped breads called soul cakes.
The trigger treating custom crossed the Atlantic with the influx of immigrants from England and Ireland who moved to the United States in the mid eighteen hundreds, but trigger treating wasn't widely popular in the United States until around nineteen forty. Before then, the mischievous holiday had spiraled into an adolescent free for all, marked by rampant vandalism and excessive tom foolery.
As communities sought to provide alternate Halloween activities for the local youth, trigger treating as we know it today, gradually caught on. Retailers also noticed the trend and began offering ready made costumes, and candy manufacturers seized on this golden opportunity. In the late nineteen seventies and early eighties, sensational reports of razors and candy apples, treats laced with laxatives, and other horror stories built a blow to trigger treating. Nonetheless,
the tradition is still alive and well today. Just ask the National Confectioners Association. This pumpkin hued holiday takes the cake for the highest candy sales of the year. Americans are expected to shell out about nine billion dollars for Halloween candy. But in spite of Halloween's commercial appeal, those ancient Celtic rights still echo on as hordes of costume
children trigger treat every year in the October Twilight. Today's episode was written by Kristin Conger and produced by Tyler Clang. To hear more from Kristin, check out her podcast Unladylike They've Got a book out too, And of course, for more on this and lots of other treats, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com