October 29, 2025 • 54 mins
This Halloween tradition has many roots and can take many forms. Anney and Lauren dig into the tricky history and cultures behind trick-or-treating.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Anniries
and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have an episode
for you about trick or treating, Yes, which is a
fun one that I'm kind of surprised we haven't already done.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Uh, we've We've kind of danced around it. We've done
a bunch of your personal favorite tricker treating related Halloween candies.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yes, and we have one left that is coming. Yes,
I have five candies I must acquire or else.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, But I suppose that answers the question of why
this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah. I think that if you're if you look at
the date that it was published, you can more or
less guess why it was on my mind. But uh, yeah,
it's a oh it's it's sort of it's one of
those ones that's like clearly food adjacent but still really cool.
It was really fun to look into.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It was really fun to look into, and it was
also difficult to not go down rabbit holes of other things.
If we were not a food podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Goodness, No, this could be a whole mini series about
all different kinds of historical things and like the entirety
of like of like of like midnight dinner parties and
phantasmagoria and seances and like all of that stuff that
was really solidifying during the eighteen hundreds that made spooky
things what they arnt was today.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
But that's wait, it's we're a food show. Ostensibly ostensibly
so ostensibly. So I do have a lot of experience
with chick or treating. I have to say, yeah, oh yes,
I I love Halloween. I have loved Talloween for a
long time. I had a Star Wars character that I
(02:04):
created named Tara Polaris. Wow, she was the best shed
I you've ever met.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Oh, wow, the best. That's so cool for her.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
If people would be like, are you obi wan Kenobi,
and I would correct them I would say absolutely no
and way better. But my hometown, which is a really
small town, they would do like trick or treating on
the square. And then my dad was a professor and
he would do trick or treating. Well, he wouldn't, but
(02:33):
the college he worked at. I would do trick or
treating at the college and they would have games and stuff.
I knew all the good houses, I knew where to
get the bars. So it was a it was a
big thing for me. And also we're going to talk
about more in the history. But the neighborhood I grew
up in was pretty far spread, like you would get
(02:55):
in a truck to trick or treat.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh sure, yeah, it just.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Didn't you could walk get you know, people really did
it up. They would build these haunted houses and things. Yeah, yeah,
it was It was fun times. I enjoyed it. Oh
that's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, yeah, I've got I've got a lot of great
memories too, of right, and especially like so I lived
for I lived in Ohio for a while when I
was real little in Pennsylvania and obviously the weather there
during like the nineteen eighties was a little bit cooler perhaps,
and so you know, trying to find a costume that
(03:34):
would be appropriate for trigger treating in and then moving
to South Florida and having the complete opposite be the issue.
And yeah, just just getting to see different you know,
like sometimes I would go with friends and see what
their neighborhoods were up to and just all the different Yeah,
(03:55):
all the different situations. Yes, I had a really good
time just going to my library, Yes, costume.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Party or the library, true colors. But also it was
I did that too. It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was like, wait a minute, I get to go
to the library and there's going to be candy there, Like, okay,
I get to wear something more ridiculous than what I
usually get to wear.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Okay. Yeah, And as I've said before, I actually the
candy was for bartering for me.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh wow, okay, right right right.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I didn't want to eat it. I wanted to I
wanted to get something out like.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
This is my currency for like the next couple months. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I could get pretty far with it, to be honest
with you, and we did. In our recent Halloween marketing episode,
we asked for people to write in about their trick
or treating experiences in the US, but other countries and
people have written in and it's been really interesting. Keep
(05:05):
that coming, oh yeah, because we would love to get
a full picture of it. It's it's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah. And yeah, I was not able to get to
the tabs that I have opened that would give any
anxiety that have to do with international Halloween traditions. I've
not been able to get to those today, so few
of those are going to be in this In this outline, you.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Did give me anxiety, which is perfect for a Halloween
outline there. I don't like a lot of tabs listeners.
If you didn't know that a bake me nervous.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, yeah, Annie is like a like an open one,
close one kind of kind of human. I'm not going
to tell you how many tabs I have opened right now.
I don't think you want to know.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I might die on the spot, and that's not what
we need for this episode. No, no, never, I would
say for this one, see our pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Episode yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yep, and our past candy episodes, which yes, does encompass
a lot of the candies that I tried to get
Yeah during Halloween.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I think uh reeses and twigs and no not
twixts terrible?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Come on?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh you hate sorry uh mounds and or almenjoy Yes, okay,
kit cats, kit cats? Oh how can I forget kit Cats, Twizzlers,
eminent peanuts.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm so sorry. You don't have to remember this for me.
I have no right getting this offended.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
You're also you've been very mysterious about what the five are.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And the last one is coming soon to a podcast.
Sneer you, saver.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I didn't even know that we had done four of them.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yet anyway, Yes, these are my five candy Well, these
are my four and you'll get the fifth soon. Yes, apples, Yes.
Talked about some stuff related to this and apple turnips maybe,
oh yeah, turnips, I will say, smante The other podcast
I Do Stuff I've Never Told You has an episode
(07:25):
on Halloween, food traditions and women, which I actually have
talked about on this podcast before. I believe in the
apple episode that there are some traditions of like peeling
an apple and then you see what shape of heel
makes and that's who you the first letter of the
guy you'll marry or something like that. There's a lot
(07:46):
of food traditions around that and are related to Halloween traditions.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's another corner that I didn't turn today. Yeah,
like putting some like like roasting some nuts on the
fire and seeing what they do, and that can tell
you things. All kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It is all kinds of stuff. It's a lot of
food related stuff. But we are kind of specifically attempting
to hone in on one thing today. Weird for doing
our best, which I guess brings us to our question.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh right, sure, yeah, trick or treating?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What is it well.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Uh, Trick or treating is a tradition modernly practiced by
children on Halloween evening that in practice can happen a
lot of ways, but the basic idea is that you
dress up in some kind of costume and go around
your neighborhood and knock on your neighbor's doors and when
they open the door, you say trick or treat and
(08:51):
they give you a piece of like small prepackaged candy
or some other little treat, and then you keep doing
that until you or the older guardians responsible for you
are tired of doing that. It's combining the fun of
dressing up unusually with the thrill of seeing other people's
(09:14):
costumes and decorations, with getting like a bag or bucket
or pillowcase full of candy by the end of the adventure.
And Halloween, yes, does have ties to like ghosts and
demons and witches and other spooky stuff, so there might
be the added chill of that. Yeah, but yeah, it's
a it's a community party again, like mostly for kids,
(09:38):
where you're encouraged to behave a little bit outside the
norm and get rewarded for it. I'm getting a little
philosophical here, but it is. Trick or treating is a
safe experience of the other.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it is. I mean you go, what else do
you go? Door to door in costume and the season
it's usually chilly and it's changing, just has a feeling
around it. And then yeah, at the end of the
night you can be like that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Hall back full of treats. So good. Yeah. Trig or
treating events can also be held in other places, you know,
some kind of community center of some kind, maybe indoors
with like tables set up like a library or a church,
or outdoors in a town square or park or a
(10:40):
parking lot for a trunk or treat. Trunk or treats
are where when families basically do like Halloween tailgating, Like
you all set up your hatchbacks with like cute little
displays and have a party and all of these, all
of these variations, like, there are some keyboard criticisms of them,
although there are lots of reasons why the kind of
(11:03):
traditional in scare quotes walking around a neighborhood knocking on
doors might not be tenable. You know, maybe, like Annie,
your neighborhood isn't walkable. Maybe folks have mobility issues. Maybe
you want to set something up that takes into consideration
food sensitivities or environmental stimuli sensitivities. Maybe you flatly do
(11:26):
not have time on whatever random night of the week
Halloween falls on that year, and you need to set
up something different, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, this is the first year I've heard of the
blue pumpkins, the teal pumpkins.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah. Yeah, people will put a teal colored pumpkin outside
their house if they offer non food related treats, just
just in case, in case you need that, just to
put people's minds at ease, you know. And right on
that note, Yeah, people can choose to give out anything really, uh,
(12:02):
you know, like maybe maybe little bags of chips or whatever, stickers,
small toys, pencils, crayons, pennies, miniboxes of raisins, pamphlets of
some kind, toothpaste. And I have put those items roughly
in order of how afraid I would personally be of
someone egging my house if I gave them out.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah. I think the worst I ever got was that
I got a nickel one time, which you know, ultimately
that's fine as a kid. And it clearly like looking back,
this poor woman was not anticipating meats, and she was
just looking at just trying to give you something. Yeah,
(12:49):
but I just remember being a nickel.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
In this economy, like.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Get any candy with that. Oh, she was doing her best.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
She was she was shout out to everyone who's just
doing their best.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Oh yeah, I mean I if I got sugar treaters,
I would I would not have anything because I don't
usually get them, but one year I might mm hmmm,
and what will I do. I'll have to come up
with something.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I usually panic by a bag of Halloween candy in
the in the week leading up to Halloween and then
like put like some kind of like lantern. I like,
turn off my porch light, but put like a lantern
and a and a bucket of the candy outside and
go like leave me alone, but have some candy.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Is this your I can't remember. Is this your first
year having Halloween at your house?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Uh? Second second year? Is that correct? Uh? I'm not
sure what is time anymore? Yeah? Yeah, no, that's that's
what I That's what I did last year. Yeah, I
think I think it's my second year. Yeah. I'm also
usually like off at a Halloween party or something, so
I'm not like greeting tricker treating because yeah, like my
(14:16):
neighborhood isn't really walkable. Uh, it's not really full of
tricker treaters. H yeah, mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
One time I got a trigger treater and I was
dressed in a what I thought wasn't a scary costume.
But I clearly scared the kids. Oh uh uh huh
uh that is consideration. Yeah, so I I still think
about that. I wasn't trying to scare any much.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Sure, Yeah, you also never know what a kid, especially
is going to get freaked out by. Indeed, I mean,
in my personal experience, if I'm wearing something with like
fake blood dripping down on my face or like you know,
like like like my eyes hollowed out like a creepy
ghost lady or something like that, Like kids are like,
oh cool, fun, but anything anything, you know, sometimes they're
(15:11):
just like, don't like your hat. That's it.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I think I was a zombie Green Day groupie.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Oh that's so specific, my guy, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, scared the kids, Yeah, scared the kids. Well, what
about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Don't don't eat traditions? Need to do that. Phantom Tollbooth
episode at some point don't eat don't eat traditions also,
you know, like if you do get a Halloween haul,
pace yourself. Just pace yourself, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, why is why words, Well, we do have
some numbers for you, We do so.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
As I said in that All Hallow's marketing episode, Halloween
spending is expected to hit thirteen point one billion dollars
this year, and candy purchases specifically are expected to make
up three point nine billion dollars worth of that, and
a lot of that might go to trigger treating. As
(16:26):
of twenty sixteen, so a little bit older, but as
of twenty sixteen, seventy six percent of households said they
were planning on handing out candy. In the US, however,
candy has like superseded the trigger treating tradition. According to
a survey from the National Confectioners Association, ninety four percent
(16:48):
of American consumers say that they're going to share chocolate
and candy with friends and family this year as part
of Halloween festivities, and over half of adults say they
buy extra candy for themselves or by some even if
they don't expect any trigger treaters.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, I'm on board. That's fun.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Oh yeah, yeah. I wanted to put this in here
because I was so charmed by it. So every year,
the US Census Bureau gets into the Halloween spirit by
releasing a set of statistics surrounding the holiday. So for
this year, they report that there are some seventy three
point one million kids under the age of eighteen in
(17:34):
the US, thus potential trigger treaters, and one hundred and
thirty three point two million occupied housing units thus potential
trigger treat stops. Of those stops, fifty six point six
million have stairs that trick or treaters would have to
climb to obtain treats. All right, yeah, yeah. Further, they
(17:59):
report that there are three thy four hundred and nine
confectionery and nut shops in the country and six hundred
and eighty one costume and formal wear rental shops.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
These numbers range from surveys taken in twenty twenty three
and twenty twenty four. It's just like the cutest, driest
most Like, I'm just like, that's so cool, Thank you,
US Sentence Bureau.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
You have to go upstairs to get to this house?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah right, cool?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
As a kid, that knowledge is important.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Well, utise F, the United Nations
International Children's Emergency Fund, runs a Trick or Treat fund
raising campaign every year in which they give out these
little like orange cardboard boxes to kids and encourage them
to ask for spare change along with candy. It is
(19:05):
apparently the longest running youth engagement campaign in the United States,
currently in its seventy fifth year as of twenty twenty five,
and they've raised almost two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
For them. Yeah. Yeah, oh, but the origins were not that.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
No, no birds, And we are going to get into
the history as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay.
So the history of trick or treating is a long
one that is rife with myth and best theories and
some of the and people purport to be the truth,
but I think that loverly overly stated in their truthfulness.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, there's there's a lot of rewriting of history that's
gone on about all of this over the over the ages,
and so it's kind of difficult to figure out, yes, exactitudes, but.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Indeed, but one of the prevailing lines of thought is
that the practice of trick or treating traces all the
way back to the ancient Celtic celebration of Sowyn two
thousand years ago. New Year's Day at the time took
place on November first, or perhaps more accurately, the end
of summer and beginning of winter, and the night before.
(20:45):
It was believed to be a time when the veil
between the living and the spirit worlds was thinnest, meaning
that demons and spirits could roam the earth amongst the living.
To appease them, people would give offerings of food, light,
bond fires, and were disguises so as not to be recognized.
This was also a time of seasonal change, heralding winter,
(21:07):
which has long been a time of preparing for harsh
times to come, so very like seasonal harvest celebration thing. Meanwhile,
ancient Rome had the harvest festival of Pomona, which also
involved food offerings that took place around the same time.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Maybe okay, so slight side quest, but Pomona was this
kind of small time goddess or spirit in Roman mythology,
a tree nymph who specifically ruled cultivated fruit and orchards.
In Ovid's Metamorphosis from like eight C. There is a
(21:49):
story about how her husband Vertumness, the god of seasonal
change and plant growth, wooed her, so people were celebrating her,
but there's no evidence that there was actually a festival
in her honor, and especially not on November first, specifically
(22:09):
or thereabouts. Vertumnus had or has a harvest festival on
August thirteenth. It seems like the connection between Pomona and
Halloween was made while Halloween traditions were in development later on,
like in the seventeen hundreds when the poet Samuel Garth
put together this prominent new English translation of the Metamorphosis.
(22:33):
So the story was fresh in people's minds, and that
coincided with apples or palms sharing an etymology with Pomona,
you know, apples being abundant in the area during the
fall harvest and often being incorporated in Halloween activities. See
our Apple episode for more on that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
But anyway, Yes, in the seventh century CE, Christian sex
took pagan holidays like Sowyn and made them more Christian ye,
or at least that's what a lot of scholars believe.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, so at the time, there was a Christian feast
day for honoring those who had died for their beliefs,
called All Saints Day. Because this was a time when
there were a lot of there was a lot of
religious persecution against Christians, and the Roman Church was basically like, Okay, look,
we can't feast every martyr individually. We're going to need
(23:35):
a group holiday. So they came up with All Saints Day.
It was originally celebrated on May thirteenth, we think, in
like the early seventh century, but over the next few
hundred years it got shifted to November first, like certainly
by the eleventh century or so. The Church argues that
(23:57):
this was entirely for their own reasons, nothing to do
with pagan anything, but whatever happened, whatever happened.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
The Celtic New Year's Day became All Saints Day or
All Hallow's Day, while the night before became known as
All Hallows Eve. The night still featured costumes, fires, and gifts,
and later became known as Halloween. Another thread that might
have helped create our modern day trigger treating is a
(24:32):
sixteenth century English practice of impoverished people begging for food
on All Souls Day, which was a practice that was
later largely taken over by children. All Souls Day is
a day of remembrance that Christians celebrated on November two,
first designated in the eleventh century CE. Often people would
(24:54):
give what we're called soul cakes. Are these sweet fall
spiced cakes adorned with cross on top in exchange for
a prayer for the recently deceased loved ones. Hallowed out
turnips attached to sticks and lit with candles representing souls
in purgatory may have been involved, if not on this day,
(25:15):
then maybe on Halloween.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
And that whole turnip thing may have gotten tied into
other traditions around Ireland and Scotland and England with the
concept that you can ward off malevolent spirits with some
kind of carved vegetable lantern, usually a turnip, but sometimes
a potato or a beat would be used. And then
(25:42):
also with the legend of Stingy Jack, who's this like
wandering trickster type spirit who carries a turnip lantern And
you can see our Pumpkin episode for a dramatic telling
of that. But yeah, those traditions were coming up around
the same time, like the fifteen to sixteen hundreds or so.
(26:03):
And another thing we have to talk about medieval mumming
or guysing. All right, This was, or kind of is
a seasonal winter game of sorts that occurred around northern
Europe and the British Isles, where people would dress up
(26:24):
in these wild or silly or like otherwise identity concealing disguises,
hence guysing disguises, yeah, and go around to people's homes
and perform some kind of song or dance or rehearsal
of a poem or play or something I don't know,
maybe challenge the hosts to a dance off or a
(26:46):
game of dice or something, and they would receive in
turn refreshment. It was spread around different winter holidays in
different places, and might be a little bit connected to Carnival.
There are complaints about this practice going back to the
thirteen hundreds, and I love that our historical data about
(27:09):
a lot of this stuff actually is based in complaints.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
If I had to be ready to do a dance
off at any time, I would also complain.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Look, man, you don't have Netflix. You have to make
your own fun. Like they were brightening your day. It's true,
this feels weird. Dungeons and dragons. But yeah, the concept
of mumming or guysing was pretty widespread by this whole
period of time that we've been talking about where these
(27:43):
other traditions were evolving, like the fifteen hundreds or so.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yes, and then when Europeans started colonizing the United States,
they brought their Halloween traditions with them, though it wasn't
until the eighteen hundreds that they grew in popularity. This comes,
I did, with the spike in the arrival of Irish
and Scottish immigrants, and this is where Halloween sort of
merged with the idea of fall harvest in the United States.
(28:11):
In eighteen sixty nine, Queen Victoria pinned one of the
first written mentions of Halloween in conjunction with some of
our more modern understandings of it. After that, more written
mentions started appearing, perhaps because of her, including an eighteen
seventy American mention that went out of its way to
label Halloween as an English holiday, because at the time
(28:35):
there was still some concern about associating too closely with
English things in America.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Again a complaint.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I love it, Oh, so many complaints. And we're about
to get into more of them.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Oh absolutely, Oh yes.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Something else that might have influenced our modern day Halloween
is the American and Canadian practice of bell snickeling and
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I strongly believe this is based in the practice of
mumming and guysing. But yes, please continue.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yes, this was a Christmas tradition that involved going door
to door in costume for a trick. Visitors would be
rewarded food or drink, so you would perform like a
little magic trick or something and get a reward. Or
people even scared kids in the house and then questioned
how good they'd been, Do you deserve a treat? In
(29:34):
some versions, people would try to guess the visitors costumes
and if they couldn't, that person got a treat, which
I would win that a million times over.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
He'd be so good at that game, I would win
every time.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
This further evolved into people trying to imitate supernatural events
like shaking windows or using something to fasten doors shut
so when people try to open the door it'd be stuck,
or stringing rope across paths, painting buildings, black slathering seats,
(30:09):
and churches with molasses, exploding pipe bombs, or even taking
apart farming equipment and putting it back together on a roof,
just for instance. Now, these again were complaints. I can't
confirm them, and they are only some of the complaints.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But whoa generally speaking, put something that doesn't belong on
a roof on a roof is like a really old
school trick. I read about that in some of the
mumming guysing literature that I was checking out.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So I have to say, it would scare me, It
would scare me. So by the twentieth century, property owners
were mounting their own defenses or doing things like shooting
buckshot at vandal and officials were urging parents to watch
(31:03):
their children and warn them away from pranking. As Halloween
moved more into the city, the pranks grew more serious.
Fire alarms pulled, houses, vandalized, bricks thrown through windows, and
young vandals demanding something or else threatening a prank, So
give me a treat or else. Essentially yes, which brings
(31:25):
us too. In the nineteen twenties, this is the first
time we see the phrase chick or treat in this context.
It was specifically out of an Alberta magazine Alberta, Canada,
describing the practice. The first American mentioned was from a
nineteen twenty eight article detailing the dread homeowners felt that
(31:47):
night and hearing that phrase. There's a popular narrative that
in order to curtail this pranking, there was a conservative
effort to make Halloween a more community, kid oriented thing.
And notably, this was during the Great Depression and people
were struggling. So this whole trigar treat thing, it did
(32:09):
have kind of an edge to it, like I'm suffering,
give me something. Yeah, yeah, I didn't look too much
into this. Again, ostensibly a food show, but apparently this
is also when early haunted houses got started.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Like early like home decorations around Halloween.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, homeowners would put up like booby traps around their
houses or in their houses to distract young men who
might vandalize them and scare them away. Again, if we
were a different show, I would love I would love
to be so deep into this research. Yeah, yes, yes,
(32:49):
but okay, once candy became more readily available after World
War two's rationing when it wasn't trick or treating exploded
in popularity and United States.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, like kind of immediately, like sugar rationing ended in
the summer of nineteen forty seven, and that fall, magazines
and candy companies started promoting trigger treating activities and Halloween products.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And this was only furthered by rapidly expanding suburban neighborhoods,
and in the fifties there was a rise in more
Halloween products. Costumes that had traditionally been homemade of things
like ghost became more often purchased characters from popular entertainment properties.
The handouts also pivoted away from homemade treats to store bought,
(33:40):
individually wrapped items.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, prior to this, you might have gotten like like
cookies or popcorn balls, caramel apples, I don't know, like
some nice roasted nuts. Money. In the film Arsenic and
Old Lace, if anyone is familiar with that one, which
came out in nineteen forty four, you see the main
(34:04):
characters giving out whole pies, like whole full sized pies,
two children wearing costumes, and y'all, I wasn't there and
I'm not totally sure, Like it's really hard to decode
sometimes in movies that are older than you, like what
(34:26):
was meant to be a realistic interpretation of an event
and what was meant to be obvious like satire or
a joke or otherwise like out of place on purpose.
And so I genuinely cannot tell if these kooky old
ladies giving out whole pies was meant to be like
(34:49):
this is something people do or obviously this is something
no one does, and this is how we're setting up
the characters. Can't tell?
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah for sure?
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Well anyway, sorry, please continue.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I love that listens. Again, we are in treating you
trick or entreating you. Please write in yes. I want
to know so much about how other people's trick or
treating experiences are because I've gotten some interesting things in
my time. I don't I have never gotten a full pie.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No, nope, nopeurs I believe popcorn balls are a thing
that I've received.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I've gotten popcorn. I don't think I've ever gotten a
popcorn ball.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I've definitely gotten pencils.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I got some like gum ones.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh okay. My favorite internet purveyor of nerdy perfume, Black
Phoenix Alchemy Lab one year put out every year they
have like a Halloween special fall kind of kind of
line of perfume in one year, they put out one
called Disappointing pencil.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Oh wow, so you're not the only one who's gotten
a pencil.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, no, no, and this is and and it smelled,
my guys, it smelled like a pencil. And I don't
know how they do it, like a disappointing Halloween pencil.
That's great anyway. Oh wow, Yes, I bought a bottle.
Why wouldn't I.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So you could remember that time in bitterness.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I kind of like the scent of pencils anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, it's not a bad smell. So back yeah, back
to the outline. So the trick part of trick or
treating kind of fell away around this time, around the
nineteen fifties, and homeowners would indicate their openness to trick
or treaters with lights.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
On or off on their porch. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yes. The celebrations moved more and more inside and became
more and more focused on children. Still, there was some
nervousness around the whole thing. President Truman's Senate Judiciary Committee
attempted to rebrand Halloween as Youth Honor Day in nineteen fifty.
(37:15):
This was a day that was meant to cultivate responsibility
and morality and kids. It didn't really get a lot
of traction.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Ah aw. Nineteen fifty was also the year that UNICEF
launched their Trigger Treat fundraising campaign. It came about when
a couple living outside of Philadelphia, a teacher and a pastor,
decided that they wanted to turn trigger treating into something
that could get kids to like help communities instead of
(37:44):
just collect candy, you know, as an exercise in building empathy.
That's nice. They got the idea in nineteen forty seven,
ran a shoe collection for refugee kids in nineteen forty eight,
and then by nineteen fifty had teamed up with UNICEF,
and shows like Lassie and Bewitch went on to promote it.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yes, and speaking of like a media push. Trick or
Treating was mentioned in the Peanuts comic strip in nineteen
fifty one. In nineteen fifty two, millions watched the cartoon
Trick or Treat with Donald Duck and his nephews. The
plot revolved around his nephews tricking him for candy instead
(38:24):
of explosives.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, he kept trying to blow them up. It was funny.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
You know, I haven't seen it, but that sounds very comical.
I would have laughed. I did. Companies realized there was
a lot of money to be made from this whole thing,
so they started to, you know, maybe we should sell
we should sell products related to this, and then it's
the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown came out in nineteen sixty six.
(38:53):
About a decade later, though, there was a rise in
urban legends that suggested it wasn't safe for kids to
take candy from strangers. And I'm sure all of you
listeners you've heard these, these tales, razor blade poison, what
have you in the candy Trying to trace these origins
of these myths, how hasn't really amounted to anything substantial.
(39:18):
There was a story out of New York in nineteen
sixty four where a woman handed out dog biscuits, steel wool,
and poisonous ant bait to patrons she deemed too old
to be trigger treating. And this whole thing only led
to a greater preference for pre wrapped candies.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
It's difficult for me to say how much of this
is just like wrapped into the kind of like like
like panic, like like Satannic panic, moral panic of the
late seventies to the mid eighties, and how much of
it is like candy company is trying to sell more
candy and certainly not just couraging that kind of talk. Yeah,
(40:03):
also to two more things than I swear we can
move on. First off, one of one of the things
that people panic about is like someone's going to put
drugs in my children's candy. And I'm not the first
to say this, this has been on the internet for
a long time. But y'all, drugs are expensive. No one
is going to give your child free drugs. Don't do drugs.
(40:26):
Be responsible, just saying, just saying. And two, it is
not up to any of us to judge how old
someone is when they're trick or treating. If someone has
the gumption to come to your door and say trick
or treat to you give them. Give them whatever you're
handing out, not ant bait. If you're giving out ant bait,
that's a different you need to go to a different podcast.
(40:47):
I but let people enjoy a simple pleasure. It's so nice,
it's so nice.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, you have a lot of candy. Probably just I mean, if.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
You're really if you're really running out, be like, look, bud,
I'm down to like two paydays and and that's and
that's it. So do you want one.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Form a trick for me?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Please go on, And I think they would appreciate that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Now honesty, yeah again, we're all out here trying to
get through it.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
We are. Well that story from what I read of
the woman in New York who refused it, gave these
like unsavory items because they were too old, it got
a lot of traction. It was a big like refuses
to yeah. Yeah. Well, over time, we have seen trick
(41:53):
or treating evolve a trunk or treat as mentioned, like
going into a town square or something like that. That
are going into a college and doing something like that.
We even mentioned the emergency candy thing that Hershey.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Does or was it hers Hershey? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
wait maybe Eminem's Eminem's. Oh gosh, very specific. The marketing
did not work.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Wow, get on that Eminem's and you know, yeah, having
a simple bowl of candy outside the door with rules
about how much you could take. I always loved the
like note card that was one bird child. Yes, yeah,
so it has changed from that in my neighborhood, they
(42:40):
still the kids still do it. I'm kind of in
like an apartment building and I'm on the second floor,
so I don't normally see it, but I can. They're
still out there and there. I love it. I'm very
happy that it still continues.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh yeah, Oh yeah. It's there's a tenacity to trigger
treating in During what I'd call the mall Heyday of
the nineteen nineties, trigger treating in shopping malls was a
whole thing. Like you would go in costume and like
gohot store to store and every store would have some
(43:15):
poor attendant handing out candy to you and Trunker treating
specifically goes back to at least nineteen ninety four. That's
the year that was mentioned in this article in the
Birmingham News newspaper that was talking about an event held
at a Baptist church in Center Point, Alabama, So that's
kind of our earliest reference to that one. In twenty nineteen,
(43:42):
the Halloween and Costume Association, which is an American trade organization,
started a petition to move Halloween from October thirty first
to the last Saturday in October, ostensibly to make it
easier for consumers to carve out time to celebrate. That
(44:02):
did not work. People didn't like that one. So they
backed off and opted to create a new holiday on
that last Saturday, which they have dubbed National trigg or
Treat Day. This is the first that I've heard of
this entire thing, though, so I don't think it has
gained a whole lot of traction. But y'all right, in.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, cool, all right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, just like I've heard about how they want to
move the Super Bowl to a different day. Oh goodness
now because of workday. Come yeah, yeah, I want a
day to recover.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Again.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Be responsible, guys, Yes, definitely, but I feel like even
if you stay up late, you eat too much candy. Anyway,
a few.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Again, be responsible, my fellow humans. Anyways, I get it you.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
A few communities did ban door to door trigger treating
in twenty twenty because of the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, yeah, there was a little bit of a decline
in trigger treating during the pandemic appause maybe though, though
in general, like the rise of these corporate and government
and other community gatherings for trigger treaters has changed the
flow through neighborhoods and like and like this was being
(45:34):
written about by like twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, so it's
not a new to the pandemic kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, neighborhoods have a lot to say about this, and
I understand.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, there's a lot of like handwringing about it online.
And one of the really good points I think is
that people who are bemoaning the loss of the neighborhood
trigger treat are kind of bemoaning the loss of having
a community and a trust in your neighbor in your neighborhood,
(46:11):
like knowing your neighbors and trusting them and getting to
see them and even having a little bit of a
social obligation to do it and what all of that meant.
And you know, obviously not everyone lives in an idyllic
nineteen fifties neighborhood, and that's always been the case, and
(46:31):
so you know, like also, I do think it's really good,
especially in these times when again we're all a little
stressed out, to know your neighbors and to have that
community in place. But also it's difficult because who wouldn't
rather just disassociate on their couch.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, And it's also kind of funny because I have
a lot of friends who have of I would say, acclimated,
settled into a new neighborhood, like bought house and want
to like they buy all the candy, they're ready. Yeah, yeah,
no kids. Yeah, which I get that too. It's hard
(47:18):
to know. It's hard to know if you knock on
someone's door whether it's light on, light off. Thing doesn't
necessarily indicate what it used to indicate.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, I feel like you can kind of scope by
the neighborhood, Like if a whole neighborhood has like the
lights and the inflatable decorations, then you know, like that's
a pretty good chance that they're into trigger treating too. Yes,
if you know, like every other house has like a
tumnal wreath on their door, then probably not.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
For haunted reasons. Oh. I also want to say, again,
we're a food show, so I didn't go into this
and I don't even know how much I would have found.
But there was a lot of talk about like guy
Fawke's day.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Oh right, totally.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
In some ways to Halloween and our traditions. So once again, listeners,
we're counting on you. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Oh my goodness, we always do. But right, yeah, about this,
particularly because we're clearly into it. But yeah, I think
that that is all we have to say about trigger
treating for now.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
It is. But we do already have some listener mail for.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
You, and we will get into that as soon as
we get back from one more quick break forward from
our sponsors. And we're back.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with this. Yes,
I think that was excellent. Yeah, all right, Tracy wrote,
(49:30):
just listen to the apricot episode. Annie mentioned the cultural significance.
While I'm pretty sure y'all were referring to the ancient
Chinese and European history, Apricots also show up in an
important American cultural history, Brownies. Brownies were invented in Chicago,
allegedly for the World's Fair in eighteen ninety four. Attached
(49:52):
is a link to the Palmer Our Hotel recipe for
brownies featuring apricot sauce. We haven't done a Brownies episode yet.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
We haven't.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I don't think we have.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, I know that I've I know that I've like
done my brief Google about it. Maybe I was like, oh,
this is tricky. Yeah, I guess we need to. I
guess we need to do an episode about brownies.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
I would love to.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Uh, I mean especially if the apricot sauce is involved.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Right, Yeah, this is my When I was in high school,
I would always make not a sponsor Duncan Hines brownies
and I would get asked like, what is your recipe?
And I would be like, oh, you know him and Hall.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
But it was, you know, just from a box. Yeah,
like no, not even any any nothing, yeah, no, no,
no occasions just.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
But I rode that way as long as I could.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
I am a sucker for Brownie and Blondie both.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
The texture, the texture is so good, Joe wrote This
email was supposed to be sent much sooner, but in
my determination to cook the recipe beforehand, it fell by
the wayside because of the difficulty in sourcing one of
the ingredients. What ingredient catfish nuggets, Not catfish filets, not
(51:22):
a whole catfish, not catfish steaks. Who even knew that existed?
But catfish nuggets. None of my usual grocery stores had it,
not even h Mart, which is usually pretty good on
the seafood front. But the search finally came to an
end this week and I was able to find them
at a locally owned independent grocery store bless why catfish nuggets.
(51:44):
According to my dad, they hold up during the stewing
process without falling apart the way that most fish would,
even other cuts from the catfish like a filet. I
can't remember if I've said this before, but my parents'
home province in the Philippines is known for stewing things
in coconut milk. This dish is catfish nuggets and a
ginger coconut milk broth. Don't get me wrong, I love
(52:05):
fried catfish, but I think this is a superior application.
It's satisfying on so many levels. Creamy from the coconut milk,
warming from the ginger, and substantial from the catfish nuggets. Honestly,
the search was worth it when I sat down to
eat the dish and was immediately taken back to dinners
at my parents' house. Recipe is enclosed below.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
And yes, if anybody wants the recipe, Joe did and
in fact and close it.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
M m hmm yeah, yeah, Oh it does sound so good.
Ginger and coconut milk are great. They're they're each great,
they're great together and doing a good simmer of catfish
in there right, Oh.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, this sounds excellent. And I have to say Joe
has written, has sentas recipes before and I have done
them and they're yeah, they're really good. So I'm excited.
I'm excited to try this goodness. Oh so it sounds
(53:14):
so good.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
And you know, listeners, we do love receiving recipes.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
M hmmm hm. Please keep those coming. If you would
like this one, we will send it to you. Just
let us know. And thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio
or more podcasts my heart Radio. You can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(54:02):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your
way
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Anniries
and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have an episode
for you about trick or treating, Yes, which is a
fun one that I'm kind of surprised we haven't already done.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Uh, we've We've kind of danced around it. We've done
a bunch of your personal favorite tricker treating related Halloween candies.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yes, and we have one left that is coming. Yes,
I have five candies I must acquire or else.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, But I suppose that answers the question of why
this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah. I think that if you're if you look at
the date that it was published, you can more or
less guess why it was on my mind. But uh, yeah,
it's a oh it's it's sort of it's one of
those ones that's like clearly food adjacent but still really cool.
It was really fun to look into.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It was really fun to look into, and it was
also difficult to not go down rabbit holes of other things.
If we were not a food podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Goodness, No, this could be a whole mini series about
all different kinds of historical things and like the entirety
of like of like of like midnight dinner parties and
phantasmagoria and seances and like all of that stuff that
was really solidifying during the eighteen hundreds that made spooky
things what they arnt was today.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
But that's wait, it's we're a food show. Ostensibly ostensibly
so ostensibly. So I do have a lot of experience
with chick or treating. I have to say, yeah, oh yes,
I I love Halloween. I have loved Talloween for a
long time. I had a Star Wars character that I
(02:04):
created named Tara Polaris. Wow, she was the best shed
I you've ever met.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Oh, wow, the best. That's so cool for her.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
If people would be like, are you obi wan Kenobi,
and I would correct them I would say absolutely no
and way better. But my hometown, which is a really
small town, they would do like trick or treating on
the square. And then my dad was a professor and
he would do trick or treating. Well, he wouldn't, but
(02:33):
the college he worked at. I would do trick or
treating at the college and they would have games and stuff.
I knew all the good houses, I knew where to
get the bars. So it was a it was a
big thing for me. And also we're going to talk
about more in the history. But the neighborhood I grew
up in was pretty far spread, like you would get
(02:55):
in a truck to trick or treat.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh sure, yeah, it just.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Didn't you could walk get you know, people really did
it up. They would build these haunted houses and things. Yeah, yeah,
it was It was fun times. I enjoyed it. Oh
that's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, yeah, I've got I've got a lot of great
memories too, of right, and especially like so I lived
for I lived in Ohio for a while when I
was real little in Pennsylvania and obviously the weather there
during like the nineteen eighties was a little bit cooler perhaps,
and so you know, trying to find a costume that
(03:34):
would be appropriate for trigger treating in and then moving
to South Florida and having the complete opposite be the issue.
And yeah, just just getting to see different you know,
like sometimes I would go with friends and see what
their neighborhoods were up to and just all the different Yeah,
(03:55):
all the different situations. Yes, I had a really good
time just going to my library, Yes, costume.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Party or the library, true colors. But also it was
I did that too. It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was like, wait a minute, I get to go
to the library and there's going to be candy there, Like, okay,
I get to wear something more ridiculous than what I
usually get to wear.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Okay. Yeah, And as I've said before, I actually the
candy was for bartering for me.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Oh wow, okay, right right right.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I didn't want to eat it. I wanted to I
wanted to get something out like.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
This is my currency for like the next couple months. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I could get pretty far with it, to be honest
with you, and we did. In our recent Halloween marketing episode,
we asked for people to write in about their trick
or treating experiences in the US, but other countries and
people have written in and it's been really interesting. Keep
(05:05):
that coming, oh yeah, because we would love to get
a full picture of it. It's it's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah. And yeah, I was not able to get to
the tabs that I have opened that would give any
anxiety that have to do with international Halloween traditions. I've
not been able to get to those today, so few
of those are going to be in this In this outline, you.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Did give me anxiety, which is perfect for a Halloween
outline there. I don't like a lot of tabs listeners.
If you didn't know that a bake me nervous.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, yeah, Annie is like a like an open one,
close one kind of kind of human. I'm not going
to tell you how many tabs I have opened right now.
I don't think you want to know.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I might die on the spot, and that's not what
we need for this episode. No, no, never, I would
say for this one, see our pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Episode yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yep, and our past candy episodes, which yes, does encompass
a lot of the candies that I tried to get
Yeah during Halloween.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I think uh reeses and twigs and no not
twixts terrible?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Come on?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh you hate sorry uh mounds and or almenjoy Yes, okay,
kit cats, kit cats? Oh how can I forget kit Cats, Twizzlers,
eminent peanuts.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm so sorry. You don't have to remember this for me.
I have no right getting this offended.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
You're also you've been very mysterious about what the five are.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And the last one is coming soon to a podcast.
Sneer you, saver.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I didn't even know that we had done four of them.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yet anyway, Yes, these are my five candy Well, these
are my four and you'll get the fifth soon. Yes, apples, Yes.
Talked about some stuff related to this and apple turnips maybe,
oh yeah, turnips, I will say, smante The other podcast
I Do Stuff I've Never Told You has an episode
(07:25):
on Halloween, food traditions and women, which I actually have
talked about on this podcast before. I believe in the
apple episode that there are some traditions of like peeling
an apple and then you see what shape of heel
makes and that's who you the first letter of the
guy you'll marry or something like that. There's a lot
(07:46):
of food traditions around that and are related to Halloween traditions.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's another corner that I didn't turn today. Yeah,
like putting some like like roasting some nuts on the
fire and seeing what they do, and that can tell
you things. All kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It is all kinds of stuff. It's a lot of
food related stuff. But we are kind of specifically attempting
to hone in on one thing today. Weird for doing
our best, which I guess brings us to our question.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh right, sure, yeah, trick or treating?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What is it well.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Uh, Trick or treating is a tradition modernly practiced by
children on Halloween evening that in practice can happen a
lot of ways, but the basic idea is that you
dress up in some kind of costume and go around
your neighborhood and knock on your neighbor's doors and when
they open the door, you say trick or treat and
(08:51):
they give you a piece of like small prepackaged candy
or some other little treat, and then you keep doing
that until you or the older guardians responsible for you
are tired of doing that. It's combining the fun of
dressing up unusually with the thrill of seeing other people's
(09:14):
costumes and decorations, with getting like a bag or bucket
or pillowcase full of candy by the end of the adventure.
And Halloween, yes, does have ties to like ghosts and
demons and witches and other spooky stuff, so there might
be the added chill of that. Yeah, but yeah, it's
a it's a community party again, like mostly for kids,
(09:38):
where you're encouraged to behave a little bit outside the
norm and get rewarded for it. I'm getting a little
philosophical here, but it is. Trick or treating is a
safe experience of the other.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it is. I mean you go, what else do
you go? Door to door in costume and the season
it's usually chilly and it's changing, just has a feeling
around it. And then yeah, at the end of the
night you can be like that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Hall back full of treats. So good. Yeah. Trig or
treating events can also be held in other places, you know,
some kind of community center of some kind, maybe indoors
with like tables set up like a library or a church,
or outdoors in a town square or park or a
(10:40):
parking lot for a trunk or treat. Trunk or treats
are where when families basically do like Halloween tailgating, Like
you all set up your hatchbacks with like cute little
displays and have a party and all of these, all
of these variations, like, there are some keyboard criticisms of them,
although there are lots of reasons why the kind of
(11:03):
traditional in scare quotes walking around a neighborhood knocking on
doors might not be tenable. You know, maybe, like Annie,
your neighborhood isn't walkable. Maybe folks have mobility issues. Maybe
you want to set something up that takes into consideration
food sensitivities or environmental stimuli sensitivities. Maybe you flatly do
(11:26):
not have time on whatever random night of the week
Halloween falls on that year, and you need to set
up something different, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, this is the first year I've heard of the
blue pumpkins, the teal pumpkins.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah. Yeah, people will put a teal colored pumpkin outside
their house if they offer non food related treats, just
just in case, in case you need that, just to
put people's minds at ease, you know. And right on
that note, Yeah, people can choose to give out anything really, uh,
(12:02):
you know, like maybe maybe little bags of chips or whatever, stickers,
small toys, pencils, crayons, pennies, miniboxes of raisins, pamphlets of
some kind, toothpaste. And I have put those items roughly
in order of how afraid I would personally be of
someone egging my house if I gave them out.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah. I think the worst I ever got was that
I got a nickel one time, which you know, ultimately
that's fine as a kid. And it clearly like looking back,
this poor woman was not anticipating meats, and she was
just looking at just trying to give you something. Yeah,
(12:49):
but I just remember being a nickel.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
In this economy, like.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Get any candy with that. Oh, she was doing her best.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
She was she was shout out to everyone who's just
doing their best.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Oh yeah, I mean I if I got sugar treaters,
I would I would not have anything because I don't
usually get them, but one year I might mm hmmm,
and what will I do. I'll have to come up
with something.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I usually panic by a bag of Halloween candy in
the in the week leading up to Halloween and then
like put like some kind of like lantern. I like,
turn off my porch light, but put like a lantern
and a and a bucket of the candy outside and
go like leave me alone, but have some candy.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Is this your I can't remember. Is this your first
year having Halloween at your house?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Uh? Second second year? Is that correct? Uh? I'm not
sure what is time anymore? Yeah? Yeah, no, that's that's
what I That's what I did last year. Yeah, I
think I think it's my second year. Yeah. I'm also
usually like off at a Halloween party or something, so
I'm not like greeting tricker treating because yeah, like my
(14:16):
neighborhood isn't really walkable. Uh, it's not really full of
tricker treaters. H yeah, mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
One time I got a trigger treater and I was
dressed in a what I thought wasn't a scary costume.
But I clearly scared the kids. Oh uh uh huh
uh that is consideration. Yeah, so I I still think
about that. I wasn't trying to scare any much.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Sure, Yeah, you also never know what a kid, especially
is going to get freaked out by. Indeed, I mean,
in my personal experience, if I'm wearing something with like
fake blood dripping down on my face or like you know,
like like like my eyes hollowed out like a creepy
ghost lady or something like that, Like kids are like,
oh cool, fun, but anything anything, you know, sometimes they're
(15:11):
just like, don't like your hat. That's it.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I think I was a zombie Green Day groupie.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Oh that's so specific, my guy, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, scared the kids, Yeah, scared the kids. Well, what
about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Don't don't eat traditions? Need to do that. Phantom Tollbooth
episode at some point don't eat don't eat traditions also,
you know, like if you do get a Halloween haul,
pace yourself. Just pace yourself, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, why is why words, Well, we do have
some numbers for you, We do so.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
As I said in that All Hallow's marketing episode, Halloween
spending is expected to hit thirteen point one billion dollars
this year, and candy purchases specifically are expected to make
up three point nine billion dollars worth of that, and
a lot of that might go to trigger treating. As
(16:26):
of twenty sixteen, so a little bit older, but as
of twenty sixteen, seventy six percent of households said they
were planning on handing out candy. In the US, however,
candy has like superseded the trigger treating tradition. According to
a survey from the National Confectioners Association, ninety four percent
(16:48):
of American consumers say that they're going to share chocolate
and candy with friends and family this year as part
of Halloween festivities, and over half of adults say they
buy extra candy for themselves or by some even if
they don't expect any trigger treaters.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, I'm on board. That's fun.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Oh yeah, yeah. I wanted to put this in here
because I was so charmed by it. So every year,
the US Census Bureau gets into the Halloween spirit by
releasing a set of statistics surrounding the holiday. So for
this year, they report that there are some seventy three
point one million kids under the age of eighteen in
(17:34):
the US, thus potential trigger treaters, and one hundred and
thirty three point two million occupied housing units thus potential
trigger treat stops. Of those stops, fifty six point six
million have stairs that trick or treaters would have to
climb to obtain treats. All right, yeah, yeah. Further, they
(17:59):
report that there are three thy four hundred and nine
confectionery and nut shops in the country and six hundred
and eighty one costume and formal wear rental shops.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
These numbers range from surveys taken in twenty twenty three
and twenty twenty four. It's just like the cutest, driest
most Like, I'm just like, that's so cool, Thank you,
US Sentence Bureau.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
You have to go upstairs to get to this house?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah right, cool?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
As a kid, that knowledge is important.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Well, utise F, the United Nations
International Children's Emergency Fund, runs a Trick or Treat fund
raising campaign every year in which they give out these
little like orange cardboard boxes to kids and encourage them
to ask for spare change along with candy. It is
(19:05):
apparently the longest running youth engagement campaign in the United States,
currently in its seventy fifth year as of twenty twenty five,
and they've raised almost two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
For them. Yeah. Yeah, oh, but the origins were not that.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
No, no birds, And we are going to get into
the history as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay.
So the history of trick or treating is a long
one that is rife with myth and best theories and
some of the and people purport to be the truth,
but I think that loverly overly stated in their truthfulness.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, there's there's a lot of rewriting of history that's
gone on about all of this over the over the ages,
and so it's kind of difficult to figure out, yes, exactitudes, but.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Indeed, but one of the prevailing lines of thought is
that the practice of trick or treating traces all the
way back to the ancient Celtic celebration of Sowyn two
thousand years ago. New Year's Day at the time took
place on November first, or perhaps more accurately, the end
of summer and beginning of winter, and the night before.
(20:45):
It was believed to be a time when the veil
between the living and the spirit worlds was thinnest, meaning
that demons and spirits could roam the earth amongst the living.
To appease them, people would give offerings of food, light,
bond fires, and were disguises so as not to be recognized.
This was also a time of seasonal change, heralding winter,
(21:07):
which has long been a time of preparing for harsh
times to come, so very like seasonal harvest celebration thing. Meanwhile,
ancient Rome had the harvest festival of Pomona, which also
involved food offerings that took place around the same time.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Maybe okay, so slight side quest, but Pomona was this
kind of small time goddess or spirit in Roman mythology,
a tree nymph who specifically ruled cultivated fruit and orchards.
In Ovid's Metamorphosis from like eight C. There is a
(21:49):
story about how her husband Vertumness, the god of seasonal
change and plant growth, wooed her, so people were celebrating her,
but there's no evidence that there was actually a festival
in her honor, and especially not on November first, specifically
(22:09):
or thereabouts. Vertumnus had or has a harvest festival on
August thirteenth. It seems like the connection between Pomona and
Halloween was made while Halloween traditions were in development later on,
like in the seventeen hundreds when the poet Samuel Garth
put together this prominent new English translation of the Metamorphosis.
(22:33):
So the story was fresh in people's minds, and that
coincided with apples or palms sharing an etymology with Pomona,
you know, apples being abundant in the area during the
fall harvest and often being incorporated in Halloween activities. See
our Apple episode for more on that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
But anyway, Yes, in the seventh century CE, Christian sex
took pagan holidays like Sowyn and made them more Christian ye,
or at least that's what a lot of scholars believe.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, so at the time, there was a Christian feast
day for honoring those who had died for their beliefs,
called All Saints Day. Because this was a time when
there were a lot of there was a lot of
religious persecution against Christians, and the Roman Church was basically like, Okay, look,
we can't feast every martyr individually. We're going to need
(23:35):
a group holiday. So they came up with All Saints Day.
It was originally celebrated on May thirteenth, we think, in
like the early seventh century, but over the next few
hundred years it got shifted to November first, like certainly
by the eleventh century or so. The Church argues that
(23:57):
this was entirely for their own reasons, nothing to do
with pagan anything, but whatever happened, whatever happened.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
The Celtic New Year's Day became All Saints Day or
All Hallow's Day, while the night before became known as
All Hallows Eve. The night still featured costumes, fires, and gifts,
and later became known as Halloween. Another thread that might
have helped create our modern day trigger treating is a
(24:32):
sixteenth century English practice of impoverished people begging for food
on All Souls Day, which was a practice that was
later largely taken over by children. All Souls Day is
a day of remembrance that Christians celebrated on November two,
first designated in the eleventh century CE. Often people would
(24:54):
give what we're called soul cakes. Are these sweet fall
spiced cakes adorned with cross on top in exchange for
a prayer for the recently deceased loved ones. Hallowed out
turnips attached to sticks and lit with candles representing souls
in purgatory may have been involved, if not on this day,
(25:15):
then maybe on Halloween.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
And that whole turnip thing may have gotten tied into
other traditions around Ireland and Scotland and England with the
concept that you can ward off malevolent spirits with some
kind of carved vegetable lantern, usually a turnip, but sometimes
a potato or a beat would be used. And then
(25:42):
also with the legend of Stingy Jack, who's this like
wandering trickster type spirit who carries a turnip lantern And
you can see our Pumpkin episode for a dramatic telling
of that. But yeah, those traditions were coming up around
the same time, like the fifteen to sixteen hundreds or so.
(26:03):
And another thing we have to talk about medieval mumming
or guysing. All right, This was, or kind of is
a seasonal winter game of sorts that occurred around northern
Europe and the British Isles, where people would dress up
(26:24):
in these wild or silly or like otherwise identity concealing disguises,
hence guysing disguises, yeah, and go around to people's homes
and perform some kind of song or dance or rehearsal
of a poem or play or something I don't know,
maybe challenge the hosts to a dance off or a
(26:46):
game of dice or something, and they would receive in
turn refreshment. It was spread around different winter holidays in
different places, and might be a little bit connected to Carnival.
There are complaints about this practice going back to the
thirteen hundreds, and I love that our historical data about
(27:09):
a lot of this stuff actually is based in complaints.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
If I had to be ready to do a dance
off at any time, I would also complain.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Look, man, you don't have Netflix. You have to make
your own fun. Like they were brightening your day. It's true,
this feels weird. Dungeons and dragons. But yeah, the concept
of mumming or guysing was pretty widespread by this whole
period of time that we've been talking about where these
(27:43):
other traditions were evolving, like the fifteen hundreds or so.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yes, and then when Europeans started colonizing the United States,
they brought their Halloween traditions with them, though it wasn't
until the eighteen hundreds that they grew in popularity. This comes,
I did, with the spike in the arrival of Irish
and Scottish immigrants, and this is where Halloween sort of
merged with the idea of fall harvest in the United States.
(28:11):
In eighteen sixty nine, Queen Victoria pinned one of the
first written mentions of Halloween in conjunction with some of
our more modern understandings of it. After that, more written
mentions started appearing, perhaps because of her, including an eighteen
seventy American mention that went out of its way to
label Halloween as an English holiday, because at the time
(28:35):
there was still some concern about associating too closely with
English things in America.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Again a complaint.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I love it, Oh, so many complaints. And we're about
to get into more of them.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Oh absolutely, Oh yes.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Something else that might have influenced our modern day Halloween
is the American and Canadian practice of bell snickeling and
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I strongly believe this is based in the practice of
mumming and guysing. But yes, please continue.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yes, this was a Christmas tradition that involved going door
to door in costume for a trick. Visitors would be
rewarded food or drink, so you would perform like a
little magic trick or something and get a reward. Or
people even scared kids in the house and then questioned
how good they'd been, Do you deserve a treat? In
(29:34):
some versions, people would try to guess the visitors costumes
and if they couldn't, that person got a treat, which
I would win that a million times over.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
He'd be so good at that game, I would win
every time.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
This further evolved into people trying to imitate supernatural events
like shaking windows or using something to fasten doors shut
so when people try to open the door it'd be stuck,
or stringing rope across paths, painting buildings, black slathering seats,
(30:09):
and churches with molasses, exploding pipe bombs, or even taking
apart farming equipment and putting it back together on a roof,
just for instance. Now, these again were complaints. I can't
confirm them, and they are only some of the complaints.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But whoa generally speaking, put something that doesn't belong on
a roof on a roof is like a really old
school trick. I read about that in some of the
mumming guysing literature that I was checking out.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So I have to say, it would scare me, It
would scare me. So by the twentieth century, property owners
were mounting their own defenses or doing things like shooting
buckshot at vandal and officials were urging parents to watch
(31:03):
their children and warn them away from pranking. As Halloween
moved more into the city, the pranks grew more serious.
Fire alarms pulled, houses, vandalized, bricks thrown through windows, and
young vandals demanding something or else threatening a prank, So
give me a treat or else. Essentially yes, which brings
(31:25):
us too. In the nineteen twenties, this is the first
time we see the phrase chick or treat in this context.
It was specifically out of an Alberta magazine Alberta, Canada,
describing the practice. The first American mentioned was from a
nineteen twenty eight article detailing the dread homeowners felt that
(31:47):
night and hearing that phrase. There's a popular narrative that
in order to curtail this pranking, there was a conservative
effort to make Halloween a more community, kid oriented thing.
And notably, this was during the Great Depression and people
were struggling. So this whole trigar treat thing, it did
(32:09):
have kind of an edge to it, like I'm suffering,
give me something. Yeah, yeah, I didn't look too much
into this. Again, ostensibly a food show, but apparently this
is also when early haunted houses got started.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Like early like home decorations around Halloween.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, homeowners would put up like booby traps around their
houses or in their houses to distract young men who
might vandalize them and scare them away. Again, if we
were a different show, I would love I would love
to be so deep into this research. Yeah, yes, yes,
(32:49):
but okay, once candy became more readily available after World
War two's rationing when it wasn't trick or treating exploded
in popularity and United States.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, like kind of immediately, like sugar rationing ended in
the summer of nineteen forty seven, and that fall, magazines
and candy companies started promoting trigger treating activities and Halloween products.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And this was only furthered by rapidly expanding suburban neighborhoods,
and in the fifties there was a rise in more
Halloween products. Costumes that had traditionally been homemade of things
like ghost became more often purchased characters from popular entertainment properties.
The handouts also pivoted away from homemade treats to store bought,
(33:40):
individually wrapped items.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, prior to this, you might have gotten like like
cookies or popcorn balls, caramel apples, I don't know, like
some nice roasted nuts. Money. In the film Arsenic and
Old Lace, if anyone is familiar with that one, which
came out in nineteen forty four, you see the main
(34:04):
characters giving out whole pies, like whole full sized pies,
two children wearing costumes, and y'all, I wasn't there and
I'm not totally sure, Like it's really hard to decode
sometimes in movies that are older than you, like what
(34:26):
was meant to be a realistic interpretation of an event
and what was meant to be obvious like satire or
a joke or otherwise like out of place on purpose.
And so I genuinely cannot tell if these kooky old
ladies giving out whole pies was meant to be like
(34:49):
this is something people do or obviously this is something
no one does, and this is how we're setting up
the characters. Can't tell?
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah for sure?
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Well anyway, sorry, please continue.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I love that listens. Again, we are in treating you
trick or entreating you. Please write in yes. I want
to know so much about how other people's trick or
treating experiences are because I've gotten some interesting things in
my time. I don't I have never gotten a full pie.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No, nope, nopeurs I believe popcorn balls are a thing
that I've received.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I've gotten popcorn. I don't think I've ever gotten a
popcorn ball.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I've definitely gotten pencils.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I got some like gum ones.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh okay. My favorite internet purveyor of nerdy perfume, Black
Phoenix Alchemy Lab one year put out every year they
have like a Halloween special fall kind of kind of
line of perfume in one year, they put out one
called Disappointing pencil.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Oh wow, so you're not the only one who's gotten
a pencil.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, no, no, and this is and and it smelled,
my guys, it smelled like a pencil. And I don't
know how they do it, like a disappointing Halloween pencil.
That's great anyway. Oh wow, Yes, I bought a bottle.
Why wouldn't I.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So you could remember that time in bitterness.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I kind of like the scent of pencils anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, it's not a bad smell. So back yeah, back
to the outline. So the trick part of trick or
treating kind of fell away around this time, around the
nineteen fifties, and homeowners would indicate their openness to trick
or treaters with lights.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
On or off on their porch. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yes. The celebrations moved more and more inside and became
more and more focused on children. Still, there was some
nervousness around the whole thing. President Truman's Senate Judiciary Committee
attempted to rebrand Halloween as Youth Honor Day in nineteen fifty.
(37:15):
This was a day that was meant to cultivate responsibility
and morality and kids. It didn't really get a lot
of traction.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Ah aw. Nineteen fifty was also the year that UNICEF
launched their Trigger Treat fundraising campaign. It came about when
a couple living outside of Philadelphia, a teacher and a pastor,
decided that they wanted to turn trigger treating into something
that could get kids to like help communities instead of
(37:44):
just collect candy, you know, as an exercise in building empathy.
That's nice. They got the idea in nineteen forty seven,
ran a shoe collection for refugee kids in nineteen forty eight,
and then by nineteen fifty had teamed up with UNICEF,
and shows like Lassie and Bewitch went on to promote it.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yes, and speaking of like a media push. Trick or
Treating was mentioned in the Peanuts comic strip in nineteen
fifty one. In nineteen fifty two, millions watched the cartoon
Trick or Treat with Donald Duck and his nephews. The
plot revolved around his nephews tricking him for candy instead
(38:24):
of explosives.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, he kept trying to blow them up. It was funny.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
You know, I haven't seen it, but that sounds very comical.
I would have laughed. I did. Companies realized there was
a lot of money to be made from this whole thing,
so they started to, you know, maybe we should sell
we should sell products related to this, and then it's
the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown came out in nineteen sixty six.
(38:53):
About a decade later, though, there was a rise in
urban legends that suggested it wasn't safe for kids to
take candy from strangers. And I'm sure all of you
listeners you've heard these, these tales, razor blade poison, what
have you in the candy Trying to trace these origins
of these myths, how hasn't really amounted to anything substantial.
(39:18):
There was a story out of New York in nineteen
sixty four where a woman handed out dog biscuits, steel wool,
and poisonous ant bait to patrons she deemed too old
to be trigger treating. And this whole thing only led
to a greater preference for pre wrapped candies.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
It's difficult for me to say how much of this
is just like wrapped into the kind of like like
like panic, like like Satannic panic, moral panic of the
late seventies to the mid eighties, and how much of
it is like candy company is trying to sell more
candy and certainly not just couraging that kind of talk. Yeah,
(40:03):
also to two more things than I swear we can
move on. First off, one of one of the things
that people panic about is like someone's going to put
drugs in my children's candy. And I'm not the first
to say this, this has been on the internet for
a long time. But y'all, drugs are expensive. No one
is going to give your child free drugs. Don't do drugs.
(40:26):
Be responsible, just saying, just saying. And two, it is
not up to any of us to judge how old
someone is when they're trick or treating. If someone has
the gumption to come to your door and say trick
or treat to you give them. Give them whatever you're
handing out, not ant bait. If you're giving out ant bait,
that's a different you need to go to a different podcast.
(40:47):
I but let people enjoy a simple pleasure. It's so nice,
it's so nice.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, you have a lot of candy. Probably just I mean, if.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
You're really if you're really running out, be like, look, bud,
I'm down to like two paydays and and that's and
that's it. So do you want one.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Form a trick for me?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Please go on, And I think they would appreciate that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Now honesty, yeah again, we're all out here trying to
get through it.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
We are. Well that story from what I read of
the woman in New York who refused it, gave these
like unsavory items because they were too old, it got
a lot of traction. It was a big like refuses
to yeah. Yeah. Well, over time, we have seen trick
(41:53):
or treating evolve a trunk or treat as mentioned, like
going into a town square or something like that. That
are going into a college and doing something like that.
We even mentioned the emergency candy thing that Hershey.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Does or was it hers Hershey? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
wait maybe Eminem's Eminem's. Oh gosh, very specific. The marketing
did not work.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Wow, get on that Eminem's and you know, yeah, having
a simple bowl of candy outside the door with rules
about how much you could take. I always loved the
like note card that was one bird child. Yes, yeah,
so it has changed from that in my neighborhood, they
(42:40):
still the kids still do it. I'm kind of in
like an apartment building and I'm on the second floor,
so I don't normally see it, but I can. They're
still out there and there. I love it. I'm very
happy that it still continues.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh yeah, Oh yeah. It's there's a tenacity to trigger
treating in During what I'd call the mall Heyday of
the nineteen nineties, trigger treating in shopping malls was a
whole thing. Like you would go in costume and like
gohot store to store and every store would have some
(43:15):
poor attendant handing out candy to you and Trunker treating
specifically goes back to at least nineteen ninety four. That's
the year that was mentioned in this article in the
Birmingham News newspaper that was talking about an event held
at a Baptist church in Center Point, Alabama, So that's
kind of our earliest reference to that one. In twenty nineteen,
(43:42):
the Halloween and Costume Association, which is an American trade organization,
started a petition to move Halloween from October thirty first
to the last Saturday in October, ostensibly to make it
easier for consumers to carve out time to celebrate. That
(44:02):
did not work. People didn't like that one. So they
backed off and opted to create a new holiday on
that last Saturday, which they have dubbed National trigg or
Treat Day. This is the first that I've heard of
this entire thing, though, so I don't think it has
gained a whole lot of traction. But y'all right, in.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, cool, all right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, just like I've heard about how they want to
move the Super Bowl to a different day. Oh goodness
now because of workday. Come yeah, yeah, I want a
day to recover.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Again.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Be responsible, guys, Yes, definitely, but I feel like even
if you stay up late, you eat too much candy. Anyway,
a few.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Again, be responsible, my fellow humans. Anyways, I get it you.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
A few communities did ban door to door trigger treating
in twenty twenty because of the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, yeah, there was a little bit of a decline
in trigger treating during the pandemic appause maybe though, though
in general, like the rise of these corporate and government
and other community gatherings for trigger treaters has changed the
flow through neighborhoods and like and like this was being
(45:34):
written about by like twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, so it's
not a new to the pandemic kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, neighborhoods have a lot to say about this, and
I understand.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, there's a lot of like handwringing about it online.
And one of the really good points I think is
that people who are bemoaning the loss of the neighborhood
trigger treat are kind of bemoaning the loss of having
a community and a trust in your neighbor in your neighborhood,
(46:11):
like knowing your neighbors and trusting them and getting to
see them and even having a little bit of a
social obligation to do it and what all of that meant.
And you know, obviously not everyone lives in an idyllic
nineteen fifties neighborhood, and that's always been the case, and
(46:31):
so you know, like also, I do think it's really good,
especially in these times when again we're all a little
stressed out, to know your neighbors and to have that
community in place. But also it's difficult because who wouldn't
rather just disassociate on their couch.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, And it's also kind of funny because I have
a lot of friends who have of I would say, acclimated,
settled into a new neighborhood, like bought house and want
to like they buy all the candy, they're ready. Yeah, yeah,
no kids. Yeah, which I get that too. It's hard
(47:18):
to know. It's hard to know if you knock on
someone's door whether it's light on, light off. Thing doesn't
necessarily indicate what it used to indicate.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, I feel like you can kind of scope by
the neighborhood, Like if a whole neighborhood has like the
lights and the inflatable decorations, then you know, like that's
a pretty good chance that they're into trigger treating too. Yes,
if you know, like every other house has like a
tumnal wreath on their door, then probably not.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
For haunted reasons. Oh. I also want to say, again,
we're a food show, so I didn't go into this
and I don't even know how much I would have found.
But there was a lot of talk about like guy
Fawke's day.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Oh right, totally.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
In some ways to Halloween and our traditions. So once again, listeners,
we're counting on you. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Oh my goodness, we always do. But right, yeah, about this,
particularly because we're clearly into it. But yeah, I think
that that is all we have to say about trigger
treating for now.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
It is. But we do already have some listener mail for.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
You, and we will get into that as soon as
we get back from one more quick break forward from
our sponsors. And we're back.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with this. Yes,
I think that was excellent. Yeah, all right, Tracy wrote,
(49:30):
just listen to the apricot episode. Annie mentioned the cultural significance.
While I'm pretty sure y'all were referring to the ancient
Chinese and European history, Apricots also show up in an
important American cultural history, Brownies. Brownies were invented in Chicago,
allegedly for the World's Fair in eighteen ninety four. Attached
(49:52):
is a link to the Palmer Our Hotel recipe for
brownies featuring apricot sauce. We haven't done a Brownies episode yet.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
We haven't.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I don't think we have.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, I know that I've I know that I've like
done my brief Google about it. Maybe I was like, oh,
this is tricky. Yeah, I guess we need to. I
guess we need to do an episode about brownies.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
I would love to.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Uh, I mean especially if the apricot sauce is involved.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Right, Yeah, this is my When I was in high school,
I would always make not a sponsor Duncan Hines brownies
and I would get asked like, what is your recipe?
And I would be like, oh, you know him and Hall.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
But it was, you know, just from a box. Yeah,
like no, not even any any nothing, yeah, no, no,
no occasions just.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
But I rode that way as long as I could.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
I am a sucker for Brownie and Blondie both.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
The texture, the texture is so good, Joe wrote This
email was supposed to be sent much sooner, but in
my determination to cook the recipe beforehand, it fell by
the wayside because of the difficulty in sourcing one of
the ingredients. What ingredient catfish nuggets, Not catfish filets, not
(51:22):
a whole catfish, not catfish steaks. Who even knew that existed?
But catfish nuggets. None of my usual grocery stores had it,
not even h Mart, which is usually pretty good on
the seafood front. But the search finally came to an
end this week and I was able to find them
at a locally owned independent grocery store bless why catfish nuggets.
(51:44):
According to my dad, they hold up during the stewing
process without falling apart the way that most fish would,
even other cuts from the catfish like a filet. I
can't remember if I've said this before, but my parents'
home province in the Philippines is known for stewing things
in coconut milk. This dish is catfish nuggets and a
ginger coconut milk broth. Don't get me wrong, I love
(52:05):
fried catfish, but I think this is a superior application.
It's satisfying on so many levels. Creamy from the coconut milk,
warming from the ginger, and substantial from the catfish nuggets. Honestly,
the search was worth it when I sat down to
eat the dish and was immediately taken back to dinners
at my parents' house. Recipe is enclosed below.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
And yes, if anybody wants the recipe, Joe did and
in fact and close it.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
M m hmm yeah, yeah, Oh it does sound so good.
Ginger and coconut milk are great. They're they're each great,
they're great together and doing a good simmer of catfish
in there right, Oh.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, this sounds excellent. And I have to say Joe
has written, has sentas recipes before and I have done
them and they're yeah, they're really good. So I'm excited.
I'm excited to try this goodness. Oh so it sounds
(53:14):
so good.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
And you know, listeners, we do love receiving recipes.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
M hmmm hm. Please keep those coming. If you would
like this one, we will send it to you. Just
let us know. And thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio
or more podcasts my heart Radio. You can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(54:02):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your
way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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