I’m Fixing To Go Trick-or-Treating

I’m fixing to go trick-or-treating.

It’s that time of year again—when folks attend costume parties, carve pumpkins into scary faces, light bonfires, bob for apples, visit haunted houses, play pranks, tell scary stories and do a lot of reveling and cavorting, and let us not forget, trick-or-treating.

Yep, next Wednesday, Oct. 31, is the yearly holiday observed around the world as Halloween. Many have attempted to track down the history of trick-or-treating and some say, as we know it today, it may be only 100 years old and didn’t really solidify as an American cultural event until after World War II.

Some say it came from Scotland where children would disguise themselves and tell a joke or say a poem in exchange for sweets, nuts or fruit.

Another explanation is that the tradition came from Ireland during the famine when people would go begging for potatoes rather than candy.

Others believe it was more related to begging for coins or treats in the urban areas of America and shopkeepers would pacify them with some sweet snack to keep themselves from being pilfered or having pranks pulled on them.

Things got out of control in the 1930s when treats became scarce and tricks became vandalism and brawls and acts of violence instead of Halloween pranking. To counter this, homes began to offer parties for children as an incentive to curb vandalism.

Candy and treats were offered to stop children from misbehaving, a tradition which has now become an every day occurrence.

It is thought that modern day trick-or-treating was solidified by the baby boom and the manufacturing spirit of the 1950s which saw the first real bags of bite-sized candy treats readily available for eager kids.

The last assumption is probably the closest to reality—the one about marketing candy.

Approximately 598 million pounds, or $1.9 billion worth of candy is sold during the Halloween season, of which nearly 90 million pounds is chocolate.

Trick-or-treating is definitely a marketing scheme perpetrated by the capitalist candy makers like Mars, Hershey, Nestle and others. I can imagine the marketing mavens and the sales weasels sitting around a conference table earlier in the year as they dreamed up sugary treats that would make kids ricochet off the walls and also make their profits soar like a witch on a broom.

Let us not forget all those others who manufacture millions of dollars worth of little paper costumes turning the little children into goblins, witches, ghouls, skeletons, and pumpkin-heads.

There’s also the haunted houses that rake in the cash for a few scary moments in a kid’s life.

Then there’s the pumpkins. Approximately 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins are sold during the Halloween season. The pumpkin sellers beat the candy sellers in pounds, but don’t come close to them in dollars.

We know what happens to the candy—the kids eat it and stay up all night after they have hidden some of it for later. But what about all those pumpkins? Nobody eats them. What happens to them?

I’m fixing to trick myself into thinking it’s all over and treat myself to a nap.