To ask what happened to "A Penny for the Guy"?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Apart from inflation, of course.

Has it been entirely replaced by the odious, American "Trick or Treat"?

Glad to see it hasn't died out completely! You never see it where I live (London).

My mother hates Trick or Treat. She hides in the back of the house with all the curtains drawn. The one year she opened her door (she was expecting a friend to call), she was met with a group of five menacing looking teenage boys who told her that they would take money if she didn't have anything else. She gave them an apple each. They threw eggs at the door of an elderly man down the street who was deaf, thought they were selling something and didn't "get" Trick or Treat.

i last done penny for the guy and carol singing on peoples doorstep in 1981 in Windsor Berkshire. When my parents moved to Cambridgeshire fens nobody was doing it here so i stopped doing it. but i carried on still doing trick or treating

We still have both here. Hordes of small kids in goulish makeup and costumes on Halloween, then a big bonfire and fireworks at Guy Fawkes. But I haven't seen the 'penny for a guy' kids around in recent years.

If yoy want to see the real deal regarding burning effigies, go to the west country. They burn whole (straw) villages!

Guising on Halloween is a completely separate tradition to penny for a guy on bonfire night.

We no longer let our children hang out alone in the street, with or without effigies?

I used to do penny for the guy as a child in the 1950s. My Dad would use old items of his clothing and make fantastic guys. One year the guy was hanging in the cupboard under the stairs waiting for us to take it out when my Grandma came to visit, she went to put her coat in the cupboard and collapsed on the floor in a faint at seeing what she thought was a body hanging up

Still get penny for the guy here NE England. I’m over 40 and Halloweening was a also thing when I was a kid.

YANBU I miss it. Good thread OP, for the nostalgia. Glad it's still around in some areas

I was born in 1980 and penny for the guy was a thing from my northern childhood. Mum and I would stuff some old clothes with newspaper and use a cheap plastic Halloween mask for the face. My friends and I would stand outside the local shop saying 'penny for the guy'...absolutely crazy.

It seems so old fashioned now and there's not a chance that I would let my children do it.