Did you say "trick or treat" or "help the poor"?

Here's some relevant stuff, taking you back to the times before the 18th century.

http://www.markoxbrow.com/bfshalloween/history.htm#ten

grew up in grosse pt. farms--we always said "help the poor". many homes invited us in and we had to sing or dance or recite some simple thing. then we were given homemade(imagine) donuts or cider or candied apples. this was from my earliest memories of halloween about 1942 thru the 50's. The worst thing i ever heard of on Hell night (night before) was soap on a car window. Once we wrote Hell on someones car and felt quite wicked. Wow. Our church was in detroit and we girls were free to walk several miles from the bus to it. wow. so glad to read this entry even if it is now oct., 2010. merry

You listen to Ron and Fez? Wow, cool. I used to listen to them when I lived in Orlando.

In our neighborhood, if you were a young kid you shouted out "Trick or Treat!." If you were nearing the borderline of being too old to be out trick or treating, you shouted "Trick or Treat for UNICEF!" so people wouldn't get on your case about being too old to be doing that.

The young boys always shouted a rhyme, something like

trick or treat
smell my feet
give me something good to eat!

Thanks to everyone who went begging who let me know that I wasn't just imagining my childhood, but that's really what we had been doing when we grew up around Detroit, it feels like you gave me some sweet digital candy. Thanks to McT for the historical background. Looks like we were the last generation that linked to a particular long tradition. As the sun is about to go down on Halloween 2010 and the ghosts and goblins are about to come out, I'm off to volunteer at a folk club in Cambridge where an old-timey music night is about to get underway. I've got my Great Pumpkin mask, and a bag of Heath Bars for those who come to hear the music, and I think I'm going to tell those who get the candy that they're not trick or treating, it's helping the poor. Last night three girls about 20 came in, one as a circus ringmaster, one as Kanga from Winnie the Pooh, with a stuffed Roo in her pouch, and the third as a flying squirrel--I asked her if she was Rocky, but the allusion went right past here--she just looked blank--another great example of tradition that hasn't stayed alive for kids these days. There was also a circa-Titanic era cruise ship recreation director, and how he came by that costume I have no idea. Probably a lot more tonight. My remote Welsh and Scottish ancestors and I wish you a Merry Samhain, Help the Poor. MJ

Interesting bit from Merry, too, linking it to mummers' plays and the Victorian parlor tradition of people doing recitations at parties.

interesting read

(it was also a good reminder to get my change out for the Unicef boxes - we usually still see a few each year)

A number of years ago my girls took UNICEF boxes around with them as they trick-or-treated. One man started yelling at them for collecting money for abortions. They were about 5 and 7 at the time and had no idea what he was talking about. That was the last year they were willing to include UNICEF in their plea. It was also the last year they went to that house.

Yes, I grew up in Detroit in early 50's. You could hear kids up and down the street chanting at lite doorsteps on Halloween night "Help the Poor". Now that I live in California, no one believes me.

JmHj, I got the same reaction in NJ and MA, everyone thought I was weird. But we know better, don't we?

I remain confident that in no decade,
nor in any century have I ever said: "help the poor"
but I HAVE advocated progressively lower and lower and lower tax rates for the rich.





David

An interesting question, and i'd never heard about that "help the poor" thing. One thing i recall from childhood, though, is that for several years, we'd carry a little can with a slotted lid, and ask the people if they'd care to donate to UNICEF, the United Nations Childrens Fund. I don't recall when that ended--probably when kids got cynical enough to rip off the funds for their own use.

Ooops . . . JPB beat me to it. But she's a young thing, so if her kids were doing it, the practice must have lasted many years.

Here nowadays, Halloween seems to have morphed into an unholy amalgam of The Rocky Horror Show and Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

And, thanks to pervading American culture on TV, our kids are more inclined to say "trick or treat" than anything else I think. I think that element came to America from German immigration.

Anyway, reading back, quite an interesting thread.

I had always thought of trick or treat as a variation on "penny for the old Guy," but altered since American children wouldn't know who Guy Fawkes was.

Wikipedia is saying it reprises wassailing, and a practice of the middle ages when the poor would go from door to door on All Saints Day and be given food in return for a promise of prayers for the donor on All Souls Day (November 2d). The article says Shakespeare has a character mentioning "Hallowmas" begging. One might be entertained by doing what i did, a search for "origins of trick or treat."

Guy Fawkes' Day, fifth of November, six days later.

aka "Bonfire Night".

I suspect the roots of both are very deep in prehistory.

In Devon/ Dorset, there is a tradition of "wassail"-ing the apple trees, to thank them for the harvest, and to promote next year's harvest.

Very pre-christian.

They have bonfire night in Ireland, and on a quite different schedule. As for prehistory, if one counts the Druids, then cetainly, because it would have been a reprise of Samhain, which i suspect is the ultimate source of the observances of the middle ages. The church was always quick to convert popular "pagan" holidays to church use. Samhain was the observance of the "death" of the year, and lighting bonfires to mourn the departing sun was a central feature.

By the way, i don't know why you keep mentioning the Germans. The earliest German immigration here in any significant numbers were "religious refugees" into Pennsylvania, where William Penn had decreed religious tolerance. Those were the Mennonites, the Amish, the Moravians and the Hussites (we would think of the latter two as Austrians and Czechs, respectively--but they would have been Germans to the local English)--and because they were "Deutsch," they inevitably got tagged as Pennsylvania Dutch. That was pre-revolution.

The next large German immigration was after the failed 1848 socialist uprisings. They tended to settle in certain areas--southeast Missouri around St. Louis and across the river in Illinois (undoubtedly coming up the river from New Orleans) and in Wisconsin around Milwaukee. I once transcribed the manuscript journal of an English immigrant who came over in 1831, and he took the traditional path up the Hudson from New York, up the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, and from there to Michigan. By 1848, i imagine the immigrant ships on the Lakes continued onto Wisconsin, Michigan having filled up. Milwaukee would have been the largest port city north of Chicago. German influences are often overstated in American history. Until 1848, the largest immigrant groups were from the British Isles, with some spurts of Polish immigration after whatever had been the most recent failed uprising.

I don't know why either. I just tend to think the Germans are behind everything.

Isn't the American Easter Bunny the Osterhase originally? The mad March hare.