Speaker 1: This is Lee Habbib and this is our American Stories,
Speaker 1: and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
Speaker 1: including you, or send them to our American Stories dot com.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to bring to light the Halloween stories
Speaker 1: that have been hiding in the dark, answering the question
Speaker 1: why do we participate in these strange celebrations every Halloween season.
Speaker 1: Here to tell the story are two of the foremost
Speaker 1: authorities on Halloween, Leslie Vanatyne and Lisa Morton. Leslie is
Speaker 1: the author of Halloween and American Holiday and American History.
Speaker 1: Lisa is the author of Trick Retreat, A History of Halloween.
Speaker 1: Here's Leslie and Lisa with the story of Halloween. I'm
Speaker 1: Leslie Vanatyne. I've been looking at, researching and writing about
Speaker 1: Halloween for over thirty five years now and it's still
Speaker 1: interesting to me. And so I guess if you wanted
Speaker 1: to start the story of Halloween, you could go back
Speaker 1: to Sawan, which was a time of year in northwestern Europe.
Speaker 1: That's Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany. It means summer's end, Swen
Speaker 1: means summer's end, and it was time of year around
Speaker 1: November first where tribes would move their livestock back to
Speaker 1: winter quarters to keep them safe, and they would gather together.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a little bit like our Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: in that people would come together, they'd play games, eight drink,
Speaker 1: tells stories, and because it was a big community kind
Speaker 1: of day or festival, the dead were naturally part of it.
Speaker 1: And there was a belief that the other world was
Speaker 1: especially present at this time, at summer's end, because we
Speaker 1: were going into the dark and dangerous season, and it's
Speaker 1: always good to consult with the ancestors when you're going
Speaker 1: into something dangerous. Salon, which by the way, is spelled
Speaker 1: sam h Ai in it looks like it should be
Speaker 1: pronounced sam Haine, but it's not. It is Salon, was
Speaker 1: a day that they did indeed celebrate on October thirty first.
Speaker 1: Their festivals started when the sun went down, so it
Speaker 1: began actually on the evening of October thirty first, and
Speaker 1: then spilled over into November first, And it was a
Speaker 1: night when they believed that the veil between the worlds
Speaker 1: was at its thinnest and that things could cross over
Speaker 1: and cause real mischief. On that night, they believed in
Speaker 1: really malicious fairies called the She and a lot of
Speaker 1: people have heard of the banshee that actually translates to
Speaker 1: a female fairy, and these fairies were really nasty little things.
Speaker 1: We're not talking Disney tinker all kind of things here.
Speaker 1: We're talking things that would come over and burn down
Speaker 1: their palaces. There's a famous story about that. There's another
Speaker 1: story about a hero who is sent out by the
Speaker 1: king on Sawan Eve to place a chord around the
Speaker 1: foot of a corpse, which is something that no one
Speaker 1: else has been able to do. And when he does this,
Speaker 1: the corpse comes to life and he lets it down
Speaker 1: and it takes it out to get a drink. It's thirsty,
Speaker 1: and it spits on people and kills them. This is
Speaker 1: an absolutely terrifying story, so it definitely had a very
Speaker 1: macab element. Sawan did. And then when the Christians missionaries
Speaker 1: came in and they were anxious to convert these celts
Speaker 1: to their faith, and they had a doctrine of not
Speaker 1: just trying to stamp out existing celebrations, but of trying
Speaker 1: to co opt them. And Pope Gregory the third was
Speaker 1: one of the big people who was behind this doctrine
Speaker 1: of trying to cop these existing celebrations, and so they
Speaker 1: sent the missionaries in and they moved the date of
Speaker 1: their Saints celebration. Originally, All Saints Day was celebrated on
Speaker 1: May thirteenth, which was an old Roman holiday associated with
Speaker 1: the dead, but they moved it to November first, and
Speaker 1: so it would begin on the eve before, and they
Speaker 1: did that to try and co opt Salon, and it
Speaker 1: was not entirely successful. Interestingly enough, so a few centuries
Speaker 1: after that they added a second holiday, which is All
Speaker 1: Soul's Day, and that actually happens on November second. All
Speaker 1: Soul's Day also served the purpose of letting everyone celebrate
Speaker 1: their deceased loved ones, not just saints, so it had
Speaker 1: kind of a dual role there, and that became much
Speaker 1: more successful now they were starting to convert the Celts
Speaker 1: and so forth. And All Saints Day doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with Halloween, but it did give Halloween
Speaker 1: its name, for All Saints Day is known in some
Speaker 1: countries as All Hallows. All Hallows means Saint or holy one,
Speaker 1: and so All Hallows Eve would be the eve before
Speaker 1: All Hallows Day all Saints Day. So Halloween comes from
Speaker 1: All Saints Day the name Halloween, but Halloween gets it's
Speaker 1: juju from All Souls Day, and so here you have
Speaker 1: the same kind of thing going on as what's going
Speaker 1: on with Sauan is that the church recognizes there's a
Speaker 1: time every year to honor the dead. There's several times,
Speaker 1: but in the fall as winters approaching. All Souls Day
Speaker 1: was instituted in about the eleventh century, and people have
Speaker 1: been visiting graveyards and remembering their loved ones and thinking
Speaker 1: of the dead for the last thousand years on that
Speaker 1: day and still do, of course in many Catholic countries.
Speaker 1: There's still visitations to the graveyards. It's an important holiday
Speaker 1: and it's important time to remember the dead. So that
Speaker 1: comes along from Saoan through the Church and becomes very
Speaker 1: popular throughout medieval times. So doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with modern Halloween. Really they're separate. But what does is
Speaker 1: the Eve of All Saints Day, the night going into
Speaker 1: this holy set of holidays which is Halloween, and like
Speaker 1: Marty Grass to Lent, Halloween is to these really important
Speaker 1: church days, it's the time to have a party. It's
Speaker 1: secular time. It's fun time. It's gathered together, play games, eat, drink,
Speaker 1: tell stories before you go into the serious church holidays,
Speaker 1: we're going to spend a lot of time indoors and praying.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Leslie Vannatyne and Lisa Morton
Speaker 1: tell the story of Halloween. I love what they just described.
Speaker 1: Marti Gras is to Lent as Halloween is to All
Speaker 1: Saints Day and all Souls Day. When we come back,
Speaker 1: more of the story of Halloween, how it came to
Speaker 1: be what it is today here on our American Stories. Folks,
Speaker 1: if you love the great American stories we tell and
Speaker 1: love America like we do, we're asking you to become
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Speaker 1: Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
Speaker 1: to the donate button and help us keep the great
Speaker 1: American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
Speaker 1: we continue with our American Stories and the story of
Speaker 1: Halloween came to be. Are two in house experts, Leslie
Speaker 1: Bannatyne and Lisa Morton continue with the story. So when
Speaker 1: the church theorized about purgatory. This was a place where
Speaker 1: souls went to wait until they could either send to
Speaker 1: heaven or not. And when purgatory became an important concept
Speaker 1: in the church, it was critical for people to pray
Speaker 1: for their dead because if the harder they prayed, the
Speaker 1: more they prayed, the easier their loved ones would have
Speaker 1: to go into heaven. So the church actually created this
Speaker 1: interactive relationship between the living and the dead. It became
Speaker 1: part of Halloween until this day. So if you pray
Speaker 1: for the dead, you can help them to heaven. There
Speaker 1: was a custom of begging house to house that was
Speaker 1: associated with All Souls Day, and in several of these processions,
Speaker 1: people could ask house to house for soul cakes. Give me,
Speaker 1: give me a piece of bread or a soul cake,
Speaker 1: and I'll say a prayer for the one you have lost.
Speaker 1: So there was this nice exchange, and it's also set
Speaker 1: a kind of precedent for a house to house begging
Speaker 1: that we still see a Halloween today, only it's candies
Speaker 1: and there's no prayers for the dearly departed. Now we
Speaker 1: have this thing coming in called All Hollows Eve, which
Speaker 1: eventually gets abbreviated into the name we know Halloween, and
Speaker 1: it was for the first few centuries and we're talking
Speaker 1: now around probably the fourteen fifteen hundreds. It was a
Speaker 1: day that was somewhat similar to Swan, that was celebrated
Speaker 1: with feasting, with gatherings, with playing games. We know, for example,
Speaker 1: that bobbing for apples was around really early on, but
Speaker 1: we are also getting them keeping that more maccab element.
Speaker 1: And one of the classic descriptions we have of an
Speaker 1: early Halloween celebration is a Robert Burns poem from seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty five called Halloween, and it talks about telling ghost
Speaker 1: stories and playing these fortune telling games. At the time,
Speaker 1: young people were obsessed with learning who they would end
Speaker 1: up marrying, so they would play these fortune telling games
Speaker 1: on Halloween night that would tell them who they might
Speaker 1: end up marrying. In the games sometimes were very maccab.
Speaker 1: They might consist of calling on the devil. Some of
Speaker 1: them were more innocent. For example, they would set nuts
Speaker 1: out in front of a fireplace and they would name
Speaker 1: each of the nuts for a specific person, and depending
Speaker 1: on which nutcracked first, would indicate who they would end
Speaker 1: up marrying. And in fact, that was so popular that
Speaker 1: in some parts of the British Isles was called Nutcrack
Speaker 1: Night rather than even Halloween or All Saints Eve or
Speaker 1: Old Hallows Eve. Another thing that was interesting about All
Speaker 1: Souls in All Saints was that it was Catholic, and
Speaker 1: so in Ireland, no problem whatsoever. But when Protestantism came
Speaker 1: in Martin Luther and in Scotland became Protestant and it
Speaker 1: in Protestantism ghosts are slights of Satan, and so in
Speaker 1: Scotland you have this incredibly rich and scary superstition about
Speaker 1: witches because if there were beings out that you couldn't
Speaker 1: see at this time of year, they were not good.
Speaker 1: In Scotland and Calvinism, these are agents of the devil,
Speaker 1: and the agents of the devil that they fixed on
Speaker 1: were witches. And so in Calvinist Scotland you got this
Speaker 1: incredible witchcraft lore wells that stuck with Halloween to today.
Speaker 1: You know, that's where we first got the Halloween Witch.
Speaker 1: The first Halloween icon maybe is the ghost that you know,
Speaker 1: you're the spirit of someone in your past who's passed on,
Speaker 1: but the second is definitely the witch, and that came
Speaker 1: from Calvinist Scotland. So with this iconography of witchcraft in
Speaker 1: its association with Halloween. It's a nighttime thing, right, Halloween
Speaker 1: is a nighttime holiday. You have to celebrate it mostly
Speaker 1: after dark, and witchcraft is kind of something that's that
Speaker 1: happens in the dark, and so nocturnal animals and creatures
Speaker 1: get associated with it just over time and throughout mythology
Speaker 1: and folklore. So the images of the witch came down
Speaker 1: through the centuries and got more and more associated with
Speaker 1: cats and bats and moons and all sorts of things
Speaker 1: that you would find in the dark. That had a
Speaker 1: lot to do with just how people portrayed Halloween later
Speaker 1: in magazines when they were drawings of it, and even
Speaker 1: later than that in the nineteen thirties in America, while
Speaker 1: you have this explosion of postcards and they needed graphic images,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden we grew up with the witch,
Speaker 1: the moon, the cat, the bat being part of Halloween.
Speaker 1: And there is a final thing that cements the place
Speaker 1: of witches in Halloween, which is much more recent, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people may not realize how important this was.
Speaker 1: There is a nineteen thirty nine film that comes out
Speaker 1: called The Wizard of Oz and Margaret Hamilton's portrayal of
Speaker 1: the wicked Witch, and that with the green skin and
Speaker 1: the huge black pointed hat and the black cloak and
Speaker 1: so forth, really created our image of the witch as
Speaker 1: we have it now. Prior to that, if you look
Speaker 1: at vintage drawings of Halloween witches, they're often in red,
Speaker 1: and they are usually depicted as being elderly but not
Speaker 1: quite so cronish looking, although there were also sexy young
Speaker 1: witches that were popular in the nineteen tens and twenties.
Speaker 1: And of course the black Cat and the cauldron are
Speaker 1: also Halloween icons that come along with the witch. And
Speaker 1: there's also a story by Edgar Allan Poe which cements
Speaker 1: the reputation of the black Cat in regards to Halloween.
Speaker 1: So at this point people might be wondering, well, how
Speaker 1: does that end up becoming associated with things like the pumpkin,
Speaker 1: which is kind of now our king of Halloween icons.
Speaker 1: The pumpkin also comes to us from Ireland. Obviously they
Speaker 1: don't have pumpkins and Ireland pumpkins are a New World
Speaker 1: fruit and they had turnips though, and the Irish loved
Speaker 1: to play pranks on Halloween, and when the Irish came
Speaker 1: to America in the mid nineteenth century. In the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: because of famine, they brought a lot of these halloween
Speaker 1: things with them, and one of the the things they
Speaker 1: brought with them was pranks. And one of their favorite
Speaker 1: pranks was to take these turnups that grew in Ireland
Speaker 1: and carve a sort of spooky looking face into them
Speaker 1: and then put a candle inside of that, and they
Speaker 1: would set that out somewhere at night on Halloween night,
Speaker 1: where an unwary traveler or an unwary homeowner might stumble
Speaker 1: across this thing. And you can imagine that if you're
Speaker 1: out late at night and you suddenly turn a corner
Speaker 1: and you see this glowing face, it would give you
Speaker 1: a bit of a start. So they brought that with
Speaker 1: them to the New World, and of course when they
Speaker 1: arrived here and found these gorgeous, huge pumpkins, they were
Speaker 1: the perfect thing to replace the turnups. But there's another
Speaker 1: thing that's associated with the pumpkin that's really interesting, which
Speaker 1: is the legendary trickster story where we get the name
Speaker 1: Jack o Lantern comes from a famous legend of Jack
Speaker 1: the Trickster, and Jack was a blacksmith who had three
Speaker 1: times trick the devil out of coming to claim his soul.
Speaker 1: But when Jack finally dies, it turns out that neither
Speaker 1: Heaven nor Hell wants anything to do with Jack. The
Speaker 1: devil agrees only to throw him a burning hell limber
Speaker 1: to light his way. And so Jack places this ember
Speaker 1: and this carved gourd and uses it to light his
Speaker 1: way as he eternally roams the earth. And that's how
Speaker 1: the name Jack o lantern came about, being associated with
Speaker 1: these carved pumpkins. In colonial America, Halloween was not a thing.
Speaker 1: There were Halloween, the secular holiday, the eve of all Hallows,
Speaker 1: was not anything that anyone would celebrate. We were Puritans,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't even celebrate Christmas. This was not
Speaker 1: going to happen. And we've been listening to Leslie Vannatyne
Speaker 1: and Lisa Morton tell the story of Halloween, and I'm
Speaker 1: learning things that I never knew about the Jack o' lantern,
Speaker 1: for instance, or the pumpkin. Great storytelling more of it
Speaker 1: to come, the story of Halloween, how it came to
Speaker 1: be here in America, such a big, big celebration day
Speaker 1: here on our American story. Folks, if you love the stories,
Speaker 1: we tell about this great country and especially the stories
Speaker 1: of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories
Speaker 1: about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith
Speaker 1: are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
Speaker 1: a place where students study all the things that are
Speaker 1: beautiful in life and all the things that are good
Speaker 1: in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
Speaker 1: will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 1: Go to Hillsdale dot du to learn more. And we
Speaker 1: continue here with our American stories and the story of
Speaker 1: Halloween as brought to us by Leslie Bennetteyne and Lisa Morton,
Speaker 1: both prolific authors and experts on the subject of all
Speaker 1: things Halloween. It's history right up to modern day times.
Speaker 1: Here's Leslie and Lisa to continue with the story. As
Speaker 1: the colonies developed, and as the new nation developed, different
Speaker 1: colonies had different religious bents, and so in Catholic colonies
Speaker 1: like Maryland, for example, yes there was all Saints and
Speaker 1: all Souls stay, but that's not Halloween. It's all Hallows
Speaker 1: in name, but it's a church holiday and it had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with witches and ghosts and Pumpkinson anything
Speaker 1: that we would recognize. Those are church holidays. The first
Speaker 1: was the Civil War when so many people had lost
Speaker 1: so many family members, and in that war more than
Speaker 1: many many many other subsequent wars combined, everybody had lost
Speaker 1: somebody and they didn't know if they were dead or alive.
Speaker 1: There was so many missing people in the Civil War,
Speaker 1: So you know, where's my husband, where's my brother? Is
Speaker 1: he coming home? Where's my son? I can't find my son.
Speaker 1: And there was a huge interest in the dead, in spiritualism,
Speaker 1: in ghosts. All of this became really important to post
Speaker 1: Civil War Victorians who were bereft, So keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: We loved ghosts at that time. And then what put
Speaker 1: the nail in the coffin was printing became cheap at
Speaker 1: that time. In the late eighteen hundreds, there were a
Speaker 1: million magazines. I exaggerate slightly. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: ladies magazines and newspapers, all of them looking for content.
Speaker 1: And when they discovered this ghostly Scottish they thought holiday
Speaker 1: that had to do with the spirit world and looking
Speaker 1: into the future. They just loved it. And so it
Speaker 1: was Victorian hostesses who started throwing the first Halloween themed parties.
Speaker 1: So let's get together and play games where we look
Speaker 1: into the future. Let's decorate by bringing the outdoors inside.
Speaker 1: Let's get cornstocks and pumpkins and all sorts of rural things,
Speaker 1: things from the country that we love, and let's throw
Speaker 1: a party on this weird night that we've heard about
Speaker 1: this Halloween. So these are all the things that we
Speaker 1: have coming over with the holiday. And you might think
Speaker 1: that maybe trick or treat, which is I think our
Speaker 1: greatest American addition to the holiday, stems directly from all
Speaker 1: of those things. But it acts, act does not. It
Speaker 1: comes from pranking. And it's a really strange history of
Speaker 1: how that comes about. The Irish who loved to play
Speaker 1: their pranks that caught on a lot in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and American kids loved playing pranks, of course, and this
Speaker 1: spread throughout the entire country, and at first it was
Speaker 1: quite innocent. The prank playing in America was things like
Speaker 1: the kids would go out to a farm and they
Speaker 1: would maybe overturn an outhouse or tip over a cow,
Speaker 1: or one of their more elaborate pranks that they loved
Speaker 1: was to disassemble a gate and move it and reassemble
Speaker 1: at some place like either the main street of the
Speaker 1: town or the top of a barn. And in fact,
Speaker 1: this one prank was so popular that Halloween was known
Speaker 1: as gate Night in many areas, and so tricks are
Speaker 1: really the first part of Halloween that we had in
Speaker 1: this kind country. And it was like every kid's right
Speaker 1: to go out under cover of darkness and take the
Speaker 1: gates off of their neighbor's pigpens, or pile stones up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the street, or put molasses on
Speaker 1: the church bench, or remove the church steps, or hang
Speaker 1: a rocking chair in the tree, or any number of pranks,
Speaker 1: and everyone would say, okay, it's Halloween. It's okay, it's
Speaker 1: just kids. So it was all good fun at first.
Speaker 1: But then by the twentieth century, as America is becoming
Speaker 1: much more urbanized and more populated, these pranks move into
Speaker 1: the cities, and when they move into the cities, they
Speaker 1: become much less nice. Now they are about destroying things,
Speaker 1: about shattering glass bulbs and windows. They are about setting fires,
Speaker 1: tripping pedestrians, and by the thirties they are causing millions
Speaker 1: of dollars of damage. And this is also during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, when a lot of these cities don't even
Speaker 1: have the money to pay for all of the damage
Speaker 1: that's resulting from this vandalism, and a lot of cities
Speaker 1: at this point considered dropping Halloween or trying to ban it.
Speaker 1: But fortunately there were a few places where cooler heads
Speaker 1: prevailed and said, you know, maybe we can buy these
Speaker 1: kids off instead of trying to ban this holiday, because
Speaker 1: that could backfire on us, which it would have. And
Speaker 1: so every civic organization you can think of, PTA's, Kawana's Moose,
Speaker 1: Junior Chamber of Commerce, churches, hospitals, dance clubs, anything through
Speaker 1: started to throw Halloween parties for kids to keep them
Speaker 1: inside where they could be seen. So Halloween was always
Speaker 1: an outside in the dark event, and this was an
Speaker 1: effort to move Halloween indoors, actually to move it more
Speaker 1: towards younger children, to help younger children celebrate it. Let's
Speaker 1: just take a little bit of the danger out of
Speaker 1: this holiday, keep the kids where we can see them,
Speaker 1: and tame it down just a little bit. And there
Speaker 1: was an enormous coast to coast effort to throw Halloween
Speaker 1: parties for kids by civic org It's actually very generous,
Speaker 1: you know, to do this and to some extent it worked.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were creative ideas. Police would drive around
Speaker 1: in their cruisers in one city and hand out candy
Speaker 1: preemptively to children so that they wouldn't come throwing cabbages
Speaker 1: at doors or ringing doorbells, just trying to tame the
Speaker 1: whole situation down. Or radio programs sometimes would have call
Speaker 1: in shows where if you were home at say seven
Speaker 1: thirty or eight o'clock and you called in, you could
Speaker 1: win a prize that keeps the child or the teenager
Speaker 1: inside where you can see them. And they got together,
Speaker 1: and they actually put out little pamphlets in many of
Speaker 1: the cities that would tell homeowners how to do this.
Speaker 1: So these little pamphlets would suggest that the homeowners get together. Again.
Speaker 1: We're still during the Great Depression, a lot of homeowners
Speaker 1: don't have money to spare for parties and so forth.
Speaker 1: But if enough of the houses got together in one street,
Speaker 1: they could put something together for the kids. And these
Speaker 1: were called house to house parties. And the way they
Speaker 1: would work was the first house might give the kids
Speaker 1: a very simple costume, probably just a sheet with two
Speaker 1: holes cut in it. The kids would get to be ghost.
Speaker 1: The next house would give the kids, maybe a little
Speaker 1: spooky entertainment, like they'd have the basement, the lights shut off,
Speaker 1: a little thing where the kids would have to go
Speaker 1: through the basement, somebody might jump out and frighten them.
Speaker 1: This becomes kind of the very earliest version of our
Speaker 1: modern haunted attraction. And then the next house would give
Speaker 1: the kids a little treat. Well, this was very popular.
Speaker 1: It caught on very quickly. Everyone started holding parties for kids.
Speaker 1: By nineteen thirty six we get the first mention in
Speaker 1: a national American magazine of the phrase trick retreat, which
Speaker 1: actually probably came down from Canada. The first recorded uses
Speaker 1: we have of it are in Canada, although they are
Speaker 1: not always in relation to kids in an actual costume.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Lisa Morton, author of Trick Retreat,
Speaker 1: A History of Halloween, and Leslie Pratt Vantine, author of
Speaker 1: Halloween and American Holiday in American History. By the way,
Speaker 1: both of those books are available on Amazon dot Com
Speaker 1: or are the usual suspects. By all means, pick them up,
Speaker 1: read them great holiday material, great holiday reading material. When
Speaker 1: we come back more of Leslie and Lisa on this
Speaker 1: story of Halloween, and we continue with our American stories
Speaker 1: and the story of Halloween and how it came to be.
Speaker 1: Leslie Benattyne and Lisa Morton continue with the storytelling. Now
Speaker 1: here's the thing, like how the trick or treat happened
Speaker 1: from all of these parties, from all these mischief and tricks,
Speaker 1: and the town fathers and mothers trying to tamp it down.
Speaker 1: That never entirely worked. What really worked was involving each
Speaker 1: individual homeowner. So there were kids out on the street
Speaker 1: accosting people for money or food or treats, and accosting
Speaker 1: like hitting them on the back with a sock full
Speaker 1: of flour or you know, and asking them for something.
Speaker 1: So the thinking was, okay, so if this, if that's
Speaker 1: what they want, if they're out accusting people, banging on doors,
Speaker 1: demanding things, and we're in our houses saying go away,
Speaker 1: go away, why not have something for them. If you
Speaker 1: ready have candy, have treats, bakes and brownies, make cookies,
Speaker 1: popcorn balls. When they come to your door, opened it up,
Speaker 1: offer it. And that, in fact, was what worked. But
Speaker 1: people had to be taught to do this. So the
Speaker 1: whole ritual, kids in a costume going to a house
Speaker 1: saying trick or treat being rewarded with a little suite
Speaker 1: that is in place by about nineteen thirty six, and
Speaker 1: it takes a few more years for it to become
Speaker 1: really widespread across the country. And then it gets put
Speaker 1: on hold during World War Two because sugar was rationed
Speaker 1: and it was very hard to get into the spirit
Speaker 1: of Halloween and get treats and so forth. But then
Speaker 1: at the end of the war it comes back with
Speaker 1: a vengeance because we now also have something called television
Speaker 1: that's coming in and trigger treat was spread in part
Speaker 1: through early sitcoms. You can, for example, go look at
Speaker 1: I think it's nineteen fifty episode of the Adventures of
Speaker 1: Ozzie and Harriet, and you can see a really early,
Speaker 1: kind of strange looking form of trigger treat. The kids
Speaker 1: are standing at the door in the afternoon and their
Speaker 1: costumes are not quite finished. But it definitely paved the
Speaker 1: way for this whole institution of trigger treat. Also, the
Speaker 1: candy companies come in now because mom sitting at home
Speaker 1: does not want to bake all day. She doesn't want
Speaker 1: to spend her day making popcorn balls or candied apples
Speaker 1: or donuts to give to these kids, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to just go out and buy a bag of pre
Speaker 1: made candies and to pass those out. There was a
Speaker 1: cartoon that was incredibly popular Cultrick or Treat. It was
Speaker 1: a Donald Duck cartoon where Hue doing Louie are you
Speaker 1: sending off small explosives? And it kind of taught what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do with kids who are pulling tricks
Speaker 1: is to offer them candy. This is what we do.
Speaker 1: And that cartoon was shown in movie theaters for for
Speaker 1: a long time and thousands and thousand, thousands of people
Speaker 1: saw it, and so we kind of started to get
Speaker 1: the pictures this is how you take care of tricks,
Speaker 1: and it's fun for kids, and it's actually fun for
Speaker 1: the homeowner who doesn't have to like, put up with
Speaker 1: his doorbell ringing, you know, every thirty seconds on Halloween night,
Speaker 1: or worry that if he doesn't open the door to
Speaker 1: kids that they'll remove his fence posts or steps by morning.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen sixty four, it was almost Unamerican not
Speaker 1: to turn your porch light on it folloween, so we
Speaker 1: now have this combination of these sitcoms and these candy
Speaker 1: companies and costume companies also come in and make it
Speaker 1: much easier again. Mom doesn't have to sew now she
Speaker 1: can just go out to the store buy a costume.
Speaker 1: The kids can buy their favorite character because now the
Speaker 1: costume companies are merchandising cartoon characters, historical characters, things like that,
Speaker 1: and tricker treat becomes a real institution for about the
Speaker 1: next twenty years, and then a couple of things happen
Speaker 1: to change trigger treating. In the early sixties, there is
Speaker 1: a woman named Helen File who gives ad She gets
Speaker 1: tired of older kids coming to her house on trick
Speaker 1: or Treat and she gives them aunt buttons, and she's
Speaker 1: doing this just because she doesn't like these older kids
Speaker 1: tricker treating, but it becomes sort of trends mogrified into
Speaker 1: the story of the anonymous psycho who is spiking apples
Speaker 1: with razor blades, and then in the early seventies that
Speaker 1: gets added to again with the story of Ronald O'Brien,
Speaker 1: who is a young boy who is poisoned by his
Speaker 1: own father who is in for an insurance scheme and
Speaker 1: puts arsenic in his children's pixie sticks. And even though
Speaker 1: it was proven pretty quickly that this was the father
Speaker 1: doing this. It again becomes a notion that there are
Speaker 1: anonymous psychos out there who are tampering with your kids
Speaker 1: treats on Halloween, and it really knocks trigger treating back.
Speaker 1: Even though a lot of hospitals are now stepping up
Speaker 1: and saying things like, well, X ray your kids candy
Speaker 1: on Halloween night, it does set the whole idea of
Speaker 1: Halloween Night being just for kids back pretty severely, and
Speaker 1: that kind of gets a final blow in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: eight when one movie changes a holiday, which is something
Speaker 1: that I don't know has happened with any other holiday.
Speaker 1: John Carpenter releases Halloween and now we have, for the
Speaker 1: first time a look at Halloween as something that is
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying and very adult. And it kind of cements
Speaker 1: that transformation of the holiday from something that is celebrated
Speaker 1: mainly by kids to something that is much more a
Speaker 1: sort of celebration of fear for adults. And that continues
Speaker 1: throughout the seventies with counterculture groups claiming a holiday, and
Speaker 1: also into the eighties when beer companies come along and
Speaker 1: realize that there is a lot of money to be
Speaker 1: made off of Halloween. The Coors Company was looking for
Speaker 1: a holiday that they could turn into their version of
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl, and their first attempt at marketing beer
Speaker 1: to Halloween did not work. It was something that a
Speaker 1: few people may remember, a silver bullet campaign. But then
Speaker 1: in about nineteen eighty six they got smart enough to
Speaker 1: hire Alvira, and as soon as they hired Elvira and
Speaker 1: put standis of her in markets throughout the country, Halloween
Speaker 1: became a beer holiday. It was huge, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the things the game that morphed this from
Speaker 1: being something for kids into something much more adult oriented.
Speaker 1: Beer sales were huge after they hired Alvira. She was
Speaker 1: the magic marketing tip there and using her and her
Speaker 1: image and so forth allowed them to take over Super
Speaker 1: Bowl and Saint Patrick's Day, which was another one that
Speaker 1: had huge beer sales, and no one had thought of
Speaker 1: selling alcohol on Halloween before that. It was genius on
Speaker 1: the part of the Corps marketing people. Anywhere there is
Speaker 1: interest in American youth culture hollow, we've been able to
Speaker 1: export Halloween goods to them so that they can celebrate it.
Speaker 1: It started slowly quite a while ago, with things like Guinness,
Speaker 1: who would market Halloween parties. Two bars that served guinness,
Speaker 1: and so they'd send out the decorations with the extra
Speaker 1: guinness and you know, here's how it's kind of like
Speaker 1: what happened with single Demyo here. More recently, it was like,
Speaker 1: here's the guinness, here's the stuff you put up in
Speaker 1: the bar. Let's celebrate Halloween. Wherever we sell guinness, it's
Speaker 1: you know it claiming the Irish holiday. The other thing
Speaker 1: that has spread it around the world is retailing in
Speaker 1: things like McDonald's putting out these Halloween themed meals all
Speaker 1: over the world. And are Sitcom's come back into play again?
Speaker 1: Everybody loves something like The Simpsons. The Simpsons is the
Speaker 1: most successful syndicated show in history, and of course The
Speaker 1: Simpsons does the Treehouse of Horror every year. Those things
Speaker 1: were seen all over the world and people started to
Speaker 1: get interested and they would pick up from there and
Speaker 1: begin to celebrate Halloween. And that kind of brings us
Speaker 1: up to where we are at now, a global celebration
Speaker 1: that really started as a strictly American holiday that was
Speaker 1: descended from ancient Celtic tribes. And great job is always
Speaker 1: on the production by Greg Hangler and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to Leslie Bennettyne and Lisa Morton again their books Trick Retreat,
Speaker 1: The History of Halloween and Halloween and American Holiday and
Speaker 1: American History, both available on Amazon dot Com or The
Speaker 1: Usual Suspects. By the way, ten billion dollars will be
Speaker 1: spent this year and every year on Halloween here in
Speaker 1: America alone, And what a story about this holiday? Not
Speaker 1: a big deal in colonial America. Let's face it, the
Speaker 1: Puritans weren't exactly partiers, and they didn't even celebrate Christmas,
Speaker 1: let alone Halloween. But after the Civil War, our greatest calamity, well,
Speaker 1: searching for the dead became well something of great interest,
Speaker 1: plus that Victorian sensibility. And then, of course, right after
Speaker 1: World War Two, we had TV, the suburbs, candy companies,
Speaker 1: mass marketing, and well, just another reason to have some fun.
Speaker 1: And Americans love to make an excuse to have some fun.
Speaker 1: The story of Halloween here on our American Stories ens