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 was brought up catholic and went to Catholic school, s I think we had every holy day of obligation off?

🙄🙄🙄

I have been to a fire works night either at home or at a local display almost every year of my life . I remember’penny for the guy’ from when I was young in the sixties and early seventies but not for many years now. My older DC were in young in the nineties and never did trick or treat but my youngest did go out with some friends from about the age of seven or eight so in the late 2000s. Bonfire night has always been part of their lives more than Halloween.

In my corner of rural England in the 80s and 90s there was no trick or treating. We went twice, as my mum pre-arranged it with a few neighbours for a birthday party. She provided the sweets. Even 15 years ago there were only a few house with pumpkins and a hope of trick or treaters and very few children (no teenagers) out and about. I’d say it’s steadily increased since then. The first noticeably big one was about 2015, when Halloween fell on a Saturday.

My kids are 19 & 21 they are both pretty good at public speaking but thanks for the advice.

Same. Guy Fawkes night is a much bigger deal, with a communal bonfire, bbq, fireworks etc.

Again I don't recognise this at all. My DC went out 15 years ago, it was most definitely a thing.

I agree i remember my now nearly 19 year old going out with his cousins as a toddler.

59 years old, grew up in London.

we didn’t do it, can’t remember anyone coming to our house to do it, can’t remember feeling left out because everyone at school did it.

I was aware of it, but only from watching Peanuts on tv!

I have a vague memory of bobbing apples as a kid but that may have been for Guy Fawkes.

Clearly we live in different areas. I have a sibling in the London are, where it has been a big thing for the entire 25 years they have been there. Not everywhere is the same.

I’m 38 so born late 80s and I never went trick or treating we just had party’s at family’s with the bin bag witches costume and then rubber fake witch fingers! I always took my children tho my eldest is 19 and 2nd nearly 18 and it was a thing in the early 00s and my youngest 2 love trick or treating.

We used to use hollowed out turnips with a candlestick inside! And, at the doors, ee used to sing ‘The sky is blue, the grass is green, have you got a penny for hallowe’en? If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, god bless you!’

I’m from the north-east and I hadn’t ever heard of ‘trick or treat’ back in the 70s and 80s.

Born mid 70s, lived in Essex, council estate, did trick or treating from the age of about eight, with a swede jack o lantern and homemade masks and witches hats. We were only allowed to go to neighbours that mum had prewarned on our road and a relative who lived a few streets away. We did apple bobbing at home and donut on a string. We had a few groups come round ours as well so it wasn’t just us. We used to get kids carol singing door to door at Christmas as well, and penny for the guy.

I grewup in the countryside so never did it but everyone I knew who lived in town went guising. It's a long standing Scottish tradition.

I’m mid-forties, and grew up in the North of England. Never went trick or treating, DM said it was a form of blackmail and refused to have any part in what she called “American Halloween”. I don’t remember anyone else trick or treating either, until I was well into my teens and some very young children were taken out by their parents. I remember we did do some games such as apple bobbing one year, and DM would sometimes let me have a cardboard witch hat from the newsagent’s. With our own DD, we have at times taken her trick or treating within our neighbourhood. We don’t make a big thing of it though.

Bonfire Night was a different story when I was young as a close family member had a birthday that day, and we always had fireworks, baked potatoes and Parkin. It felt like such a treat as we did it on the day, regardless of whether it was a school night; I don’t remember ever doing anything else during the week in term time, and they were such lovely, happy family-focused evenings.

We were doing it in the 70s in Ireland, but calling it ‘going round the houses’ and just wearing a bin bag and a cardboard witches hat and a mask you made at school. Turnips rather than pumpkins being carved, apple bobbing, barm brack. Absolutely no sense of contradiction with an intensely Catholic belief system, and the next day being a holiday of obligation. We lived on a busy main road, so tended to go only to the houses of immediate neighbours and people we knew, and you were expected to sing or recite before you got sweets. People also gave shell-on nuts and oranges.

ETA And on an RTE documentary shown last week, the National Folklore Collection has a cast of a carved Halloween turnip head from the 1920s.

I love that!

Round here no one would dream of going to a non decorated house, so it's not really begging it's more people advertising they are giving out sweets!

I was born early 70s, never went trick or treating as a child. Went to one Halloween party when I was about 12 and have vague memories of trick or treating once, but I was an early teen by then. Hardly anyone trick or treated in our area. My dad viewed it as a bad thing that would annoy people and I don't remember seeing any pumpkins in windows. There didn't seem to be the etiquette of knocking on doors with pumpkins then.
My children, born 2000 and upwards, trick or treated every year once they were old enough to enjoy it and the atmosphere has always been jovial and fun with loads of people everywhere. It's completely different to how I remember it as a child.

It was always a thing in our area growing up - in rural Ireland in the early 1970s. We always knocked on doors, in fancy dress (but home made - masks from cereal boxes and many costumes involved black sacks or borrowed adult clothes). We didn’t have pumpkins but we used to carve sugar beet to hold candle stumps (a bit bigger than a swede/celeriac). And we’d often go back to one house as a group to play games, many involving apple, that were only played at Halloween.

Never did it as a child, my mum said it was "begging" and she didn't agree with it. We did however get trick or treaters coming to our door every year, so I think it was a fairly normal thing to do in the 90s. And I remember one year at Christmas, going carol singing and selling biscuits door to door to raise money for a charity (maybe the charity thing made it not "begging"? )

I think it was thought of as a class thing, maybe? My mum could be a bit inadvertantly snobby.

From aged about 4 in Ireland I’m 50 now. It is not an American tradition that is a mad notion that some people have.

Oh and you said

“penny for the púca”

which means penny for the ghost (poo ka) but you got sweets in return.

Aw yes, I will always think fondly of the year where DS asked at every house “what do you call a gummy bear with no teeth?” 🤣

I love that you carved sugar beet. I bet it was easier than bloody turnips!

We diced with death by one of our apple games involving suspending a stick horizontally with an apple on one end and a lighted candle at the other. You had to try to take a bit from the Apple without burning your eyebrows off.

You have to love the 70s. It’s astonishing any of us lived to adulthood.