When did you start 'Trick or Treating'?

[Kimura]

I feel like I'm seeing more and most posts from MN'ers saying that they never did 'American-style' trick or treating when they were young. I'd always assumed these posters would skew towards the older age brackets on here, but this year I'm noticing people around my own age (early 40s) and younger talking about knocking on doors for sweets etc like it's a new US fad.

I grew up in the North of England in the late 80s/early-mid 90s and I have many memories of going trick or treating as a young kid, then taking my younger sibling when I got older. I've never known it not to be a thing.

My late grandmother used to tell me about doing 'Penny for the Guy' on Guy Fawkes night when she was young...so while I don't disagree that it's become commercialised, I don't think stuff like this is new or 'American'.

Curious to know how far back other people remember doing it!

I live now thst it’s known if your house has signs of being a house you call to you call there. Told my mum to turn off her lights and nobody would bother her (she’s on a cane and barely walking st the moment and was worried people would think she was terrible but she wouldn’t get to the door in time) but know loads of elderly people who light up the house and it makes their autumn chatting to kids and oohing and aahing over costumes etc

As others said, most people went guising in Scotland and still do. I’m in my 40s. The kids these days want to call it ‘trick or treating’ and we adults all correct them to call it guising!

I'm a 90s child from SE England. We didn't do trick or treating as my DM didn't thought it was "anti-social" and "common" but I do remember it going on.

Now live up north and do it with my kids. I'm lucky as at least where I am it feels more like a pleasant community event with parents supervising and reminding the kids to say thank you.

And yes everyone here follows the rule of only knocking if there is a lit pumpkin or obvious decorations.

I’m 70 and can remember dressing for Halloween and going round neighbours doors from the 1950’s in Scotland. It wasn’t called trick or treating then. And you were expected to tell a joke or sing a song before being rewarded with an apple and a few monkey nuts. It was unusual to be given sweets, it was mostly monkey nuts and apples. But I’ve never forgotten when I was about 6 a neighbour gave me a threepenny coin. I was delighted!

It’s weird now I think of it, our parents thought we were safe in an unsupervised group of 4, and told us in no uncertain terms not to knock on the house at the end of the road because he was a “weirdo” (actually a paedo, later convicted, but we didn’t use that word). Could you imagine saying that to your kids and thinking “job done, they’re safe.” I really think we were less safe then, we were just completely unaware of how unsafe we were.

70s Up North. Hollowed out swede ( very hard work) with a candle stump in it. Nobody had pumpkins.

Sorry, should have said, I was in the northwest midlands.

Im in my thirties and I wasnt allowed as a kid. Mixed part lf south London. My parents turned the lights off! We never got many anyway but it was at a time and place where people didn’t really decorate like they do today. Now it’s obvious which houses to go to.

So once my son turned 3 we started and I bloody love it.

Early 40s here and definitely went trick or treating as a child in Yorkshire, albeit with a witch’s hat and black bin bag, none of the shop bought outfits and specific trick or treating buckets / bags that seem necessary now.

I’m 60’s living in SE. I’ve never gone trick or treating, my own DC dressed up
as witches once after watching some American programme but they didn’t knock on doors. I suggested taking GC recently and he looked at me as if I had two heads. It’s really not a thing here

This. And we have pictures of my mother and her siblings dressed up for Halloween in 1956 too!

I went trick or treating in 1972 aged 12. However we lived on a military base with a lot of Americans so I reckon that’s where the idea came from.

I was born in the early 80s and never went trick or treating as my mum said no kid of hers was going begging. I would have felt very uncomfortable going round houses expecting free stuff. I don’t recall anyone coming trick or treating to the house until the mid-90s.
My younger brother used to sneak out with his friends in the mid-90s at Halloween and come back with lots of sweets and money that he’d hide from our mum and share some with me.

Penny for the guy and mischievous night were popular where I lived. I hated penny for the guy as the kids who did it were quite aggressive.

When I moved out at 20, I lived for 15yrs in a housing estate and never had a single kid knock on my door at Halloween in all the time I lived there. I used to see very young kids go out early (between 4-5pm), going only to specific houses and then back home. Where I live now I’ve never had a trick or treater in the 4yrs I’ve been here as we’re outside the village and no one can be bothered to walk down here.

I'm 37 - I can only remember going once and that's when we lived on an army base and it was a very 'enclosed' community where we knew everyone. Other than that, we never went and I don't remember our door being knocked on either. We did however go to a lot of Halloween parties with apple bobbing, sweets in the flour, doughnuts on a string etc. I loathe trick or treating and would far rather take my kids to one of those parties if I could!

Egging! I remember a bloke at one house my friends and I knocked on giving us a bit of a hard time. He kept asking what the 'trick' was and making fun of our costumes. One of my friends mentioned going to the shop for some eggs (we had no intention of doing this) and he shut the door on us in a huff.

Few minutes later his wife came running down the street with a handful of change "for the costumes"...poor woman clearly didn't relish the thought of cleaning her windows the next day!

I'm pretty sure we all got dragged into an assembly that year as some kids were egging houses/cars. I think they ended up telling all the shops not to serve us.

Guising here and absolutely did it as a wee one. We were very busy last night, learnt a lot of new jokes and there was one dance! It was all done and dusted by about 8.30.
It’s clearly a regional thing - it would never been seen as begging here in Scotland. I think we’d consider it part of our culture.

Trick or treating was a big thing in the early eighties where I lived. I used to dress up in a bin liner with a plastic mask and a cardboard witches hat.

It’s vaguely irritating to have to explain this on MN every single year.

Scotland has a very long tradition of Halloween guising, going back hundreds of years.

I’m over 50 and went guising in the 70s & 80s and both my parents and grandparents talked about guising as children. It is not a new tradition.

In my day costumes were handmade (often with bin bags and toilet rolls) and as a pp mentioned we carried turnip lanterns (my poor Mum having to carve them)

We got mostly fruit and nuts in our Halloween bags with the odd 5p piece and occasional sweetie.

Of course we did a song/joke/poem for our goodies just as Scottish kids do today.

It was common in the late 80s where I lived in the north of England but my mum wouldn’t let me go and we had to sit inside with the lights off all evening.

it was something everyone did when I was a child (I’m mid 40s so late 80s/early 90s). It was different though- no one decorated their houses for Halloween and you’d often get people on random days before Halloween which we’d turn away. I also don’t think we knocked on peoples doors who we didn’t know back then. I think it died off though and we didn’t used to get anyone for years.

Now people who want to be trick or treated decorate their houses (some very extravagantly) and we go to any house that’s decorated on our route. Kids got absolutely loads of sweets.

Born mid 80s, London. Was aware of ToT, but not allowed to go.
My GM (in Scotland) was terrified every Halloween... she lived in retirement flats, and to those who didn't know, the gates on the main road were actually back gates leading to the elderly peoples living rooms or bedrooms so there was constant banging on the windows. Eventually the management agreed to padlock those gates on those nights.
In London you needed ID to buy eggs and flour in late October as the shops wouldn't sell them to teenagers.

I live in Yorkshire now where apparently Mischief Night is still a thing, although not seen anything bad so far.

I am 41 and grew up in NI.

We dressed up in fancy dress and did halloween rhyming around my street. We knocked on doors in our costumes and people gave us change. We never said "trick or treat", just went straight into the rhyme when people opened their doors. The first time someone gave us food instead of money, we thought they were bonkers 😂.

Early 90's. We said "a penny for Halloween" instead of "trick or treat" but it was essentially the same thing. I went out unaccompanied, with other kids from around 5 and want to every house, which looking back was awful, but I think normal at the time (or maybe no one thought to tell me we were meant to just go to decorated houses?).

As a younger kid it was mainly small change that we'd get, we'd pool it and split between the group when we got home. By the end of primary school it started to shift to "trick or treat" and more people started buying in sweets and decorating.

In my late 40s now, but I’ve never been trick or treating. Parents saw it as begging. I know some of my friends did partake but there were no costumes.

That sounds like a mix of ToT and "Penny for the Guy" for Guy Fawkes night.