# What's the "trick" part of "treat or trick"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 20, 2004, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198 "2004-10-20T10:35:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/21 "2004-10-20T19:09:36Z")
One the big kids always talked about doing (and which I saw the results of once) in the sprinklerful neighborhoods around here is to fill the yard with pretzels and wait for the sprinklers to come on in the morning. God, what a mess. And very difficult to clean up. Ordinarily, however, eggs and toilet paper. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/22 "2004-10-20T19:29:06Z")
> [@ggurl](#): > > They remembered stuff like scattering corn on someone’s porch if they didn’t give you candy. NOOOOO!!! Not the dreaded corn-scattering!!! Actually, that sounds like a very old tradition which probably has interesting origins. ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/23 "2004-10-20T19:50:44Z")
We sprayed silly string onto doors one year. That’s the only time we ever bothered with a trick. Usually if they didn’t have sweets we’d just move onto the next house. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/24 "2004-10-20T20:00:22Z")
“…Kids race from house to house demanding protection money…” – Paul Stukey, talking about Halloween ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/25 "2004-10-20T21:13:05Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > NOOOOO!!! Not the dreaded corn-scattering!!! I’m guessing the corn-scattering results in a lot of bird droppings. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/26 "2004-10-20T21:25:01Z")
> [@Room Finder](#): > > Generally there isn’t much choice, other than whether you want to clean the eggs off your car and house today, or tomorrow when it’s dried out a little. You’ll be hating life if you wait until it dries. :smack: Protiens like egg yolks and milk can be a m\*&%$#@er to remove. Every try to wash dried egg out of cotton? We need to get serious folks. Halloween “tricks” that don’t actually involve somone being killed [make baby Satan](http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1053/1053_01.asp) cry. ---
**Author:** ![GillianBoardman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GillianBoardman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GillianBoardman)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/27 "2004-10-20T22:51:57Z")
I’m 42. When I was a kid, in the suburbs of Philly, the night before halloween was “mischief night”. On that night, if you actually had parents who’d let you out, you made calls on the neighbors you didn’t like and played annoying pranks. Throwing dried corn at windows, (so the people would keep jumping up to see what the noise was, I presume), soaping windows if you were brave enough to get that close, tp-ing the shrubs or trees, and I suppose some actually did the flaming bag of poop, but I never heard of it. The pranks were pretty innocent in the '60’s & 70’s, at least in the 'burbs. Generally this was all done by kids too old for trick or treating. On halloween, you said “trick or treat” but only the very old people actually expected you to do a trick, and they rarely insisted when you were confused by the request. We also did “trick or treat for unicef”, but ran around for that in the daylight right after school, before the real deal, so that you didn’t get cheated out of candy. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/28 "2004-10-20T23:15:12Z")
The earliest known use — in print — of the phrase “trick or treat”: 5 November 1939, _Helena Daily Independent_ (Helena, Montana), pg. 4, col. 3: > [@](#): > > Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Billett held open house Tuesday evening, October 31, when groups of children from all parts of town called to play “trick or treat.” Various games entertainment and refreshments made Halloween a memorable occasion. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/29 "2004-10-20T23:27:24Z")
In the St. Louis area kids still do the ‘trick’ part of ‘trick or treat’. Usually telling a joke, singing a song or doing a little skit. My personal favorites (told by slightly older kids): Why didn’t the boy skeleton cross the road? He didn’t have the guts Why didn’t the girl skeleton cross the road? She didn’t have the balls. ---
**Author:** ![Gcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gcat)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/30 "2004-10-21T00:01:28Z")
“Trick or Treat Smell my feet Give me something good to eat!” When trick or treating in the 80’s my friends and I didn’t play tricks on people. It was all about the candy. If no one was home, then on to the next house. If you took the time to play mean tricks on people, that means less candy. ---
**Author:** ![quothz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/da6949/32.png) [@quothz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quothz)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198/31 "2004-10-21T00:25:37Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > So, does the “trick” part actually happen? (it could even be because the “victim” doesn’t mind the kids having some fun at his/her expense) Or did it use to happen? If so, what kind of “tricks” can/could be used? [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treat), my own rather cheap New Standard Encyclopedia, and my own experiences with the holiday, confirm the idea that pranks are performed on those who don’t pay up with the candy in the United States. Good old extortion. Ah, nostalgia. Wikipedia notes that, in Scotland, the practice of performing tricks such as recital or acrobatics was common as a requirement for getting treats. It further implies rather strongly that England and Ireland follow this tradition. I must admit I prefer the American tradition of high jinks. Classical pranks include, as mentioned, smearing windows with soap or eggs, stringing toilet paper among trees, deflating car tires, and placing fresh dog feces in amusing places (although the “flaming bag” trick wasn’t used on Halloween in my recollection; we didn’t want to get people who answered the door. That was more of a general-purpose prank). I also seem to recall _ahem_ someone in our town injecting a mixture of superglue and rubbing alcohol into door locks, which isn’t funny at -all- unless you happen to be a twelve-year-old boy. The European tradition, also known as guising, is the older and still going strong, while the American trick-or-treaters reached their heyday in the 1940s (according to Wikipedia, again). This seems to mesh pretty well with the newspaper cite Walloon posted, which is the only hard information I’ve seen on the origin of the phrase. So I’m pretty sure the disagreement that seems to be present is merely the result of multiple cultural traditions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-trick-part-of-treat-or-trick/270198.md?page=1)