Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Where Did Trick-Or-Treating Come From?

Transcript

Where Did Trick-Or-Treating Come From? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there,
0:15
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry And this is Stuff you Should Know
0:19
Speaker 1: the right before Halloween. Addition about it, I get like
0:25
Speaker 1: a little kid every Alloween. I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah,
0:28
Speaker 1: do you get trick or treaters? No? Not really, no
0:31
Speaker 1: kind of life hashtag, etcetera. Yeah, And I've told my
0:35
Speaker 1: story before, but I'll just briefly summarize again that my
0:39
Speaker 1: house is after a big curve in the road, and
0:42
Speaker 1: people seem to just stop at that curve in the road. Well,
0:45
Speaker 1: they don't want to come up on old man Bryant's house.
0:48
Speaker 1: You know, the old dead oak tree with the big
0:51
Speaker 1: hole in it that yeah Boo Radley hides figures in
0:54
Speaker 1: its kind of off putting. It's right on your property.
0:57
Speaker 1: And I think, uh, in my neighborhood too. They close
0:59
Speaker 1: they literally close off, the cops close off two blocks.
1:03
Speaker 1: This's just this big square of streets and that's the
1:07
Speaker 1: official sanctioned no stress area where the parents all just
1:12
Speaker 1: walk around and get drunk and all the kids just
1:14
Speaker 1: run around and don't have to worry about cars. So um,
1:19
Speaker 1: everyone in my neighborhood is congregated there and you're outside
1:22
Speaker 1: of them outside, yeah, which I kind of miss, Like
1:26
Speaker 1: I like tricker treaters coming to my house. Like I
1:29
Speaker 1: guess I could maybe try, and well, I can move
1:32
Speaker 1: a few houses in which I'm not gonna do. We
1:34
Speaker 1: could casually move the roadblocks of a little further back
1:38
Speaker 1: to include your house. One of their actual police cars
1:41
Speaker 1: with police officers, and I can't move them, but I
1:44
Speaker 1: could put signs that like you know this way for
1:47
Speaker 1: the best yet and then you like only two more
1:50
Speaker 1: houses right, or like leave a trail of candy because
1:53
Speaker 1: I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, we rented
1:55
Speaker 1: a house that got a lot of Tricker treaters and
1:58
Speaker 1: I loved it. Man, I scared at the heck out
2:00
Speaker 1: of those kids. Yeah, it was a lot of fun,
2:03
Speaker 1: Like I really got that was my first big adult
2:07
Speaker 1: giving out candy night, Like the first time I've ever
2:10
Speaker 1: been able to do that because you didn't have kids yet,
2:12
Speaker 1: so we weren't out trick or treating and uh yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: I made a really pumped music out like the psycho
2:19
Speaker 1: theme and scary John Carpenter stuff. I really enjoyed it.
2:23
Speaker 1: Did you like do anything to overtly scare them? Oh? Yes,
2:27
Speaker 1: I wore a I was dressed up as a very
2:30
Speaker 1: scary person, and I would jump out and scare them
2:34
Speaker 1: over and over and over. Did you really jump out?
2:37
Speaker 1: Good for you? Or I would stand in the like
2:39
Speaker 1: Emily would be giving out candy and I would just
2:42
Speaker 1: be in the darkened house, like eight feet behind her,
2:44
Speaker 1: just standing there motionless. That's always a nice attack. But
2:50
Speaker 1: the point is I sort of feel like we're missing out.
2:52
Speaker 1: Like we certainly enjoyed taking our daughter out, but I
2:55
Speaker 1: really wish we had kids that came by. Yeah, I
2:57
Speaker 1: wish you did too, too bad. Stupid us right there
3:00
Speaker 1: near the main road, so close yet so far away,
3:03
Speaker 1: so far away, and that's your forever house to huh. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: no trick or treaters ever again for you. I walked
3:09
Speaker 1: in there. But what we could do is, you know,
3:12
Speaker 1: we could go to a friend's house, and that this accounting.
3:15
Speaker 1: You have to jump on their coattails. You can't sit
3:17
Speaker 1: on their couch, you have to take your shoes off
3:20
Speaker 1: in their house. You can't be comfortable We've long talked
3:22
Speaker 1: to me and my friend Eddie and Allison, you know them,
3:24
Speaker 1: about they have a good backyard. It's about doing like
3:27
Speaker 1: a haunted trail one year that like, if you come
3:30
Speaker 1: trick or treating, you've got to go through the trail first.
3:32
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of work. It is, and
3:34
Speaker 1: it would be fun, you know, I mean for the
3:36
Speaker 1: kids who have to go through the trail. Gotta earn
3:39
Speaker 1: you gotta earn that free candy, earned that Reese's pieces.
3:43
Speaker 1: So we just hit upon like fifteen different themes in
3:46
Speaker 1: this episode, if you'll if you'll agree, I agree. Um,
3:52
Speaker 1: So we're talking about trick or treating here, and if
3:56
Speaker 1: you look at the thing on its face, just the
3:58
Speaker 1: words trick or treat, there seems to be some sort
4:02
Speaker 1: of option here you can do one or the other.
4:04
Speaker 1: There used to be give me a treat or you
4:07
Speaker 1: get a trick, basically was the equation. Yeah, they should
4:09
Speaker 1: just change the name now to just treat night, treat
4:11
Speaker 1: night right exactly. Um. We aren't sure on where trigger
4:17
Speaker 1: treating came from, but what we do know is that
4:19
Speaker 1: it was originated in America in the twentieth century, and
4:22
Speaker 1: that there was this really like brief golden age where
4:26
Speaker 1: it lived up to his name, trick or treat. There
4:28
Speaker 1: was a there was an offer to not get pranked
4:32
Speaker 1: or tricked, and if you didn't take the people up
4:35
Speaker 1: on the offer, the kids up on the offer by
4:36
Speaker 1: giving him candy, you got pranked. That was the equation.
4:39
Speaker 1: It was in the name. Everybody knew the score. And
4:42
Speaker 1: then it slowly kind of moved over to what we
4:45
Speaker 1: understand today where the police set up roadblocks and everything
4:49
Speaker 1: is safe these kids these days, and it's just kinda
4:52
Speaker 1: just like you said, just the treat side of the equation. Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 1: I was, of course kidding, but we'll get to it.
4:57
Speaker 1: There are people that really do decry this new generation
5:01
Speaker 1: of children who just expect handouts and that it leads
5:05
Speaker 1: to the idea of the welfare state and all this
5:07
Speaker 1: other garbage that I have no patience for because it's
5:12
Speaker 1: just a fun thing for kids. Yeah, or do you
5:15
Speaker 1: think they should be earning this stuff? No? No, no,
5:17
Speaker 1: I don't feel that way. I do feel well, I
5:20
Speaker 1: think it will come through loud and clear as we
5:22
Speaker 1: do the episode. Right, Well, we should jump back a
5:24
Speaker 1: little bit to the origins of Halloween. We've gone over
5:26
Speaker 1: this before in episode's past. But we all know it
5:29
Speaker 1: originally started as a pagan harvest or not just one,
5:33
Speaker 1: but pagan harvest festivals in general among the Celts over
5:37
Speaker 1: in the UK and uh, that evolved into Halloween, but
5:42
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with trick or treating at
5:44
Speaker 1: the time. No, it wasn't round Again, trick or treating
5:47
Speaker 1: is a pent American invention, that's right. Um. And so
5:51
Speaker 1: with Halloween in particular, you've got all these different components
5:55
Speaker 1: for the modern Halloween. For trick or treating, you have
5:58
Speaker 1: going from house to how you have getting to said
6:01
Speaker 1: house and asking for a treat, basically sanctioned begging, costume, costume,
6:06
Speaker 1: dressing up, um, got being outside kind of parading around.
6:10
Speaker 1: All of these things find their origin in the Celtic
6:13
Speaker 1: and I think specifically Gaelic um harvest festivals that introduced
6:19
Speaker 1: the dark half of the year, that's right. And in
6:22
Speaker 1: particular there was Salwint, which forever I've always said sam
6:26
Speaker 1: Haine because that's how it spelled. Now, you said Salen
6:29
Speaker 1: right when we did our Halloween episode, didn't you. Probably,
6:33
Speaker 1: by the way, speaking of Sawin or sam Haine, you
6:36
Speaker 1: realized that I went to New York and saw the
6:38
Speaker 1: Misfits on. How was that colossally amazing? This is the
6:43
Speaker 1: original Misfits, right, the original Misfits, Glenn dan ziggery only
6:47
Speaker 1: Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein who actually specifically invited us to this, right, yes,
6:54
Speaker 1: um to this uh this show, and it was that's amazing.
6:57
Speaker 1: Knock your socks off? Didn't the Damned play as well?
6:59
Speaker 1: The Damned open and then ran sid and then the
7:01
Speaker 1: Misfits just tore the roof off the succer I saw
7:04
Speaker 1: when I saw you were going. I looked up some
7:06
Speaker 1: YouTube clips of this tour and it looked pretty amazing.
7:09
Speaker 1: It was amazing, and I think Glenn Danzig said that
7:12
Speaker 1: was their last one ever and so we got to
7:15
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, you mean I had a great time. Amazing,
7:18
Speaker 1: So big, big thanks to Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein for
7:21
Speaker 1: the invite. The stage set up look great, it was.
7:24
Speaker 1: It was just a really cool show and they played
7:26
Speaker 1: almost everything. Yeah, yeah, it was just really good. That's fantastic.
7:31
Speaker 1: So anyway back to Swin, Yeah, so, uh, I mean
7:34
Speaker 1: that's a perfect time to mention that show though all
7:37
Speaker 1: worked out, it did. Um. Hallow's Eve was the night
7:43
Speaker 1: considered when the veil between the living and the dead
7:46
Speaker 1: was the shortest, and so that's when this that's when
7:50
Speaker 1: Halloween formed, right, right, So people would dress up in
7:55
Speaker 1: like modern day Ireland, Scotland, I believe, Wales, yell of
8:00
Speaker 1: and um. They would dress up like demons or fairies
8:03
Speaker 1: or supernatural characters who were um because this veil was
8:07
Speaker 1: so thin between the living and the dead or the supernatural. Um,
8:11
Speaker 1: they could cross over. These creatures could cross over and communicate.
8:14
Speaker 1: So if you dressed up like them, maybe they would
8:17
Speaker 1: be confused and think you're one of them and leave
8:19
Speaker 1: you alone. That's right. So this now we've got the
8:21
Speaker 1: costume thing going right, that's right. And uh, part of
8:25
Speaker 1: that was the community getting together, uh getting drunk on
8:30
Speaker 1: you know, probably high octane mead, meat and stuff like that.
8:35
Speaker 1: And they would parade through the town. They saw Halloween
8:37
Speaker 1: parades all over the place. Here in Atlanta we have
8:40
Speaker 1: one of the best and little five Points Halloween parraade. Fantastic,
8:43
Speaker 1: Like when you think about the Halloween parade at your town,
8:46
Speaker 1: like that is centuries millennia old, that tradition is. Yeah,
8:50
Speaker 1: So we have those two things going on, and then
8:54
Speaker 1: the one missing piece is knock knock, Hey, give me candy.
8:59
Speaker 1: But this we have the origins of which came and
9:02
Speaker 1: it's still not Halloween. It took American kids to put
9:05
Speaker 1: all this stuff together. But the European tradition of souling,
9:09
Speaker 1: which was when kids on hallows E would go from
9:12
Speaker 1: house to house house and pray for the souls of
9:15
Speaker 1: the departed, and in exchange you would get a soul cake. Yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: which I looked up. They looked pretty good. What is it?
9:22
Speaker 1: Just a little bit good. It looks like a muffin top,
9:24
Speaker 1: like top of the muff into you. It looks really
9:27
Speaker 1: good soul cakes or mumming which is and this sounds fantastic.
9:32
Speaker 1: I wish kids still had to do this stuff. You
9:35
Speaker 1: would have to perform a short musical number or some
9:39
Speaker 1: kind of performance to get a treat of some kind,
9:43
Speaker 1: maybe a little spear change. Right, So in that sense
9:46
Speaker 1: you have going to house to house and getting something
9:48
Speaker 1: from the owners of the house, like a treat or
9:50
Speaker 1: something like that. That's right, But there was a reason
9:54
Speaker 1: for that, praying for the soul of their departed loved one,
9:56
Speaker 1: doing a little dance number something like that. The prank
10:00
Speaker 1: part the prank part of the equation that also existed
10:03
Speaker 1: before trick or treating too, and in fact, that was
10:06
Speaker 1: kind of the origin or the biggest tradition of Halloween itself,
10:12
Speaker 1: was pranking. Yeah, and that came from Ireland, Is that right? Yah?
10:15
Speaker 1: Supposedly in the eighteen eighties they would prank. They would
10:18
Speaker 1: just run around doing pranks, and then they would blame
10:20
Speaker 1: those fairies or demons han sawen um for the mischief
10:25
Speaker 1: that it wasn't us, it was the fairies, right, I
10:29
Speaker 1: mean it sounds that's how it's spelled. Yeah, it's really
10:32
Speaker 1: that's a confounding pronunciation, it is. But there you have it,
10:35
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And then pranks back then, and of
10:37
Speaker 1: course we're pretty low key uh ding dong ditch stuff
10:41
Speaker 1: like that, um moving the neighbor's furniture to the roof.
10:45
Speaker 1: I saw that, like flower pot on the chimney. Sure,
10:49
Speaker 1: but it would also get way way worse than that. Yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: I looked up Mischief Night. We never did that in
10:56
Speaker 1: Georgia or Devil's Night. It was also called yeah, just
11:00
Speaker 1: the night before Halloween when all these pranks would happen. Um.
11:03
Speaker 1: Region to region is called different. Apparently in Uh, New
11:07
Speaker 1: Jersey it's Mischief Night, Cabbage Well in Camden, New Jersey's
11:11
Speaker 1: Mischief Night. Other parts of New Jersey call it Cabbage Night.
11:15
Speaker 1: UM Cincinnata calls it Damage Night. That's pretty over. That's
11:20
Speaker 1: a punk band name right there, Damage Night totally, that
11:24
Speaker 1: insurance deductible night other parts. I don't know why Ohio
11:28
Speaker 1: is so highly represented here. Beggar's Night is something else.
11:31
Speaker 1: They called it in Ohio because there's nothing else to
11:33
Speaker 1: do in Ohio but sit around and wait for that
11:36
Speaker 1: night for Hallow's Eve. Other names Doorbell Night, trick Night,
11:40
Speaker 1: corn Night, tic Tech Night, Goosey Night. And then in Canada,
11:46
Speaker 1: Gate Night or Matt Night if you're in Quebec because
11:50
Speaker 1: mt they would take they would steal the gate off
11:52
Speaker 1: your fence or the mat from your doorstep. And yeah, okay,
11:57
Speaker 1: so they're pretty on the nose, especially Becambage Night. But
12:01
Speaker 1: Devil's Night in Detroit. Uh, it became legendary over about
12:05
Speaker 1: a twenty year period in the seventies and through the
12:09
Speaker 1: mid nineties. I saw before they finally got a little
12:12
Speaker 1: bit of a UM could put a dent in it
12:16
Speaker 1: by forming Angels Night. Yeah, they kind of re rebranded it, well,
12:22
Speaker 1: not rebranded. The angels were volunteers who would walk around
12:26
Speaker 1: to keep kids from setting everything on fire, okay, because
12:28
Speaker 1: that's what they did on Devil's Night. It was a
12:30
Speaker 1: night of artis the night of arson. I thought that
12:32
Speaker 1: it ran its course because they burned all the buildings
12:34
Speaker 1: down in Detroit. There was nothing else left. It was
12:37
Speaker 1: a real problem, though. I looked into it and like
12:40
Speaker 1: hundreds of kids, Like in nineteen ninety four, I think
12:43
Speaker 1: there were like three hundred and fifteen kids arrested, uh
12:47
Speaker 1: from Devil's Night fires and other stuff. In the peak
12:52
Speaker 1: of Devil's Night in Detroit, there were eight hundred and
12:55
Speaker 1: ten cases of arson in one night. Amazing in Detroit. Yeah,
12:58
Speaker 1: they would just set the city on fire. And I'm
13:01
Speaker 1: sure some of these were bags of poop on a doorstep,
13:04
Speaker 1: which I think we can all agree. It is harmless fun,
13:06
Speaker 1: it is unless you're the steppy so overdid any of
13:10
Speaker 1: the stuff? I never rolled the house. Oh you didn't know.
13:13
Speaker 1: I was. I'm so mad. I was so busy being good.
13:15
Speaker 1: Never too late, buddy, I know I should roll a
13:17
Speaker 1: house fork a yard. I don't know what that is.
13:20
Speaker 1: The plastic forks just basically get like two thousand plastic
13:24
Speaker 1: forks and stick them in the yard. I've never heard
13:27
Speaker 1: of that. We never did that, really chew up a
13:29
Speaker 1: lawnmar I never egged a house because I always heard
13:31
Speaker 1: that really damages paint. But we did have the junior
13:34
Speaker 1: senior egg fight every year. That was kind of fun.
13:36
Speaker 1: Well you go, you got something, We get together in
13:38
Speaker 1: a field and uh the eggs at each other. Aside
13:41
Speaker 1: from wasting a lot of resource with well eggs, yes,
13:46
Speaker 1: but also um toilet paper. You really should roll somebody's
13:50
Speaker 1: house at least it's great, is it? Yeah? All right, yeah,
13:55
Speaker 1: I'm gonna roll your condo. I remember when I was
13:58
Speaker 1: a kid. Actually my friend and I rolled the neighbor's house,
14:02
Speaker 1: but we had to be in or at least, so
14:03
Speaker 1: we were doing it basically in broad daylight. It was
14:06
Speaker 1: dusk at best, and the cop drove by, which never
14:10
Speaker 1: happened in our neighborhood ever. Never. The cops just weren't needed, right.
14:15
Speaker 1: It was just I think we talked about in the
14:16
Speaker 1: free Range episode in his Parents episode, you could just
14:19
Speaker 1: do whatever, and um, we had to knock out of
14:23
Speaker 1: the house of the neighbor whose house we just rolled
14:25
Speaker 1: to let us in to hide from the cop, and
14:28
Speaker 1: she went out and told the cop like, it's it's fine,
14:30
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. We roll her house and had
14:32
Speaker 1: to get safe harbor from her. Yeah, and you can't
14:35
Speaker 1: really clean up a roll house, can't you. You can,
14:38
Speaker 1: And if they come tell your parents what you did.
14:42
Speaker 1: The rain makes it way worse. Yeah, but I mean
14:44
Speaker 1: you can't just right, some of it's inevitably stuck up there.
14:47
Speaker 1: But you can pull it down as as gingerly as
14:49
Speaker 1: you can to get as much as you can. But no,
14:52
Speaker 1: something's going to be left over, all right, I'm gonna
14:55
Speaker 1: roll a house, Okay, just know whose house you're rolling like,
14:58
Speaker 1: you don't want to get shot at her. And I
15:00
Speaker 1: don't see that anymore either, I feel like it. I mean,
15:02
Speaker 1: I don't live in the suburbs. Maybe it's a little
15:04
Speaker 1: more prone to happen there, but it seems like a
15:06
Speaker 1: lost art very well. Maybe I don't know anybody who rolls.
15:11
Speaker 1: I just assumed it was because we'd outgrown it, you know.
15:14
Speaker 1: Emily called it t being a house. Yeah that's Ohio. Yeah, alright,
15:19
Speaker 1: let's take a break. Were barely talked about this. I
15:23
Speaker 1: think we're one page in good that's great, all right,
15:47
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, stuff you should you shouldn't know. Alright.
15:59
Speaker 1: So to recap Chuck, we have the costumes in play now,
16:03
Speaker 1: we have being out on Halloween nights sometimes parading drunkenly community. Um,
16:07
Speaker 1: we have going from house to house, and we have
16:10
Speaker 1: the prank factor. That's all of these things are out
16:13
Speaker 1: there floating around, have been out there for centuries, millennia
16:17
Speaker 1: by the time America is born and makes it to
16:19
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. And at some point some kids said,
16:24
Speaker 1: we think, hey, you know what, we can pull all
16:26
Speaker 1: this together and turn it into something really amazing and
16:30
Speaker 1: peculiar and unique called trick or treating. That's right. You
16:33
Speaker 1: found a great piece, uh from a sociologist named Samira Kawash,
16:40
Speaker 1: great name called gangsters, pranksters and tricker treating ninety to
16:45
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. And is this that pure period that you
16:50
Speaker 1: were talking about where she thinks that American kids just
16:54
Speaker 1: created this thing. Yeah, there's two historical views because we
16:58
Speaker 1: don't know where it came from. One historical view and
17:01
Speaker 1: I think this is what co Wash believes to is
17:03
Speaker 1: that it was actually kids who figure this out. Which
17:06
Speaker 1: is great. Who said we can extort adults to not
17:09
Speaker 1: prank them if they give us treats and that it
17:12
Speaker 1: was a genuinely a kid invention of kids they made
17:17
Speaker 1: it up, and um, there's some evidence for that kind
17:20
Speaker 1: of thing. A lot of like the early newspaper accounts
17:23
Speaker 1: of it kind of called the kids gangsters and say
17:26
Speaker 1: they're extorting people. It's also possible that was like written
17:29
Speaker 1: super tongue in cheek and that that dry. It was
17:32
Speaker 1: kind of dry and lost to the ages. The other
17:36
Speaker 1: historical view is that the kids were out pranking and
17:40
Speaker 1: doing the pranks and it was the adults that introduced
17:43
Speaker 1: treats into the equation to buy them off, Yeah, to
17:47
Speaker 1: keep them from pranking. Uh. Los Angeles possibly as the
17:52
Speaker 1: point of origin. Um, and this one wealthy kids. I
17:58
Speaker 1: guess that makes sense that this would be the idea
18:00
Speaker 1: of like kids of privilege, you know, like come around,
18:04
Speaker 1: give me stuff. But apparently in Los Angeles, kids in
18:08
Speaker 1: the wealthy parts of town would dress up and their
18:10
Speaker 1: parents would take them around from house to house. And
18:13
Speaker 1: this is, um, this is that pre nineteen thirty period though, Yeah,
18:18
Speaker 1: they think sometime in the twenties. And if you think
18:19
Speaker 1: about it, that really resembles what we do today. Yeah,
18:23
Speaker 1: But in between that origin and where where we've arrived today,
18:28
Speaker 1: there was this pure period nineteen thirty and nineteen sixties.
18:32
Speaker 1: Some people might even take it a little further beyond that,
18:35
Speaker 1: where the kids seem to have run the show. And um,
18:40
Speaker 1: there there really was both sides of the equation a
18:43
Speaker 1: trick or a treat, right, But that term actually was
18:46
Speaker 1: in nine seven and an article rights that the first
18:49
Speaker 1: time they found the two words in print together our
18:53
Speaker 1: guess three words. That was in an article about a
18:56
Speaker 1: town uh called Blackie and Albert to Canada. And it
19:02
Speaker 1: seems like all of it was sort of on the
19:03
Speaker 1: West coast early on. Yeah, and again they think possibly
19:07
Speaker 1: it did originate in Los Angeles, or it may have
19:10
Speaker 1: originated in multiple towns on the West Coast roughly at
19:13
Speaker 1: the same time. But we're thinking twenties because in nineteen
19:15
Speaker 1: nineteen there was a book by Ruth Edna called Ruth
19:19
Speaker 1: and Nickel Ruth endic Kelly called the Book of Halloween,
19:23
Speaker 1: and it didn't mention any kind of trick or treating
19:25
Speaker 1: in there. No, And it's like an exhaustive, comprehensive homemakers
19:30
Speaker 1: would have been in there for sure. And you gotta think,
19:32
Speaker 1: like poor Ruth and Nickelly' is like, gosh, if I
19:35
Speaker 1: just waited like two years and put this book out,
19:38
Speaker 1: they're gonna come up with something brand new with Halloween.
19:40
Speaker 1: Two years after I come up with this book, I
19:43
Speaker 1: wrote the book on it. Not quite now it's out
19:46
Speaker 1: of date, but they did find mentions of it in
19:48
Speaker 1: newspapers out West Portland, Washington, Reno, Nevada, Nevada, Helena, Montana.
19:55
Speaker 1: And you can kind of track its progress from the
19:58
Speaker 1: dates and mentions in West these paper articles. Right. Yeah. Um,
20:02
Speaker 1: So there's those two sides. One say that it was
20:05
Speaker 1: kids who came up with it on their own. Um,
20:09
Speaker 1: perhaps they were introduced with the idea of going from
20:11
Speaker 1: house to house to get treats in Los Angeles, but
20:14
Speaker 1: then they said, well, we're also doing these prankings. Maybe
20:17
Speaker 1: we can say, hey, we won't prank you if you
20:19
Speaker 1: give us a treat. There's that view. The other view
20:21
Speaker 1: again is that, um, it was adults who said, whoa kids,
20:25
Speaker 1: You know, we don't want you setting fires any longer,
20:27
Speaker 1: derailing street cars because every once a while somebody would die,
20:31
Speaker 1: people would get shot at by angry neighbors. Um. Sometimes
20:35
Speaker 1: somebody would be in one of those buildings that they
20:37
Speaker 1: set on fire and they die. People would die in
20:40
Speaker 1: a building that kids set on fire as a Halloween prank.
20:42
Speaker 1: So for the most part, though, it was this kind
20:45
Speaker 1: of um tolerated as one night a year when the
20:48
Speaker 1: kids basically had power and we're allowed to run the show. UM.
20:53
Speaker 1: So that this idea, this other historical view that adults
20:56
Speaker 1: finally said, hey, you know, we're not gonna just say
20:59
Speaker 1: you can't do prank king. They'll probably be a bad thing.
21:01
Speaker 1: But why don't we just start having parties on Halloween
21:04
Speaker 1: night while we're out pranking, and they'll be cider and
21:07
Speaker 1: donuts and you can come inside and bob for apples
21:09
Speaker 1: and maybe do that instead of running around pranking the neighborhood.
21:13
Speaker 1: And once you did do that, you went from and
21:16
Speaker 1: this is um samir co washed putting it like you
21:19
Speaker 1: under the rules of society. You went from this powerful
21:23
Speaker 1: kid who could levy a prank on you if he
21:25
Speaker 1: or she wanted to, to a house guest of the
21:28
Speaker 1: adult who now had you in and had given you
21:31
Speaker 1: donuts and cider. You're really going to set their house
21:34
Speaker 1: on fire as a prank. After that, of course, not, no,
21:36
Speaker 1: you're not going to so. In this sense, trigger treating
21:39
Speaker 1: was something the adults introduced to keep kids from carrying
21:44
Speaker 1: out these pranks. Yeah, and it was by the time
21:46
Speaker 1: World War two came around. It was a big thing
21:49
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. But of course, with the sugar
21:52
Speaker 1: ration ng and just the fact that there was World
21:55
Speaker 1: War Two going on, it put a dent in it
21:57
Speaker 1: for a little while. But it came back um bigger
22:01
Speaker 1: than it ever had been after the war. And I
22:03
Speaker 1: mean seriously, it came very close to dying from World
22:08
Speaker 1: War Two. It was pretty new. It hadn't gained that
22:10
Speaker 1: much traction. There were a lot of cranks and grumps
22:13
Speaker 1: who were not happy about this kind of thing. I'm
22:15
Speaker 1: curious what else had died in the war and never
22:18
Speaker 1: came back. There's got to be lots of little things.
22:20
Speaker 1: It's a great question. But there were a couple of
22:23
Speaker 1: big pop culture um sort of tent poles that helped
22:28
Speaker 1: Halloween along Charles Schultz's Peanuts. Of course, it wasn't the
22:32
Speaker 1: Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown yet that. Yeah, but in nineteen
22:37
Speaker 1: fifty one he had a four day um comic strip
22:41
Speaker 1: run around Halloween where the Peanuts gang got already and
22:44
Speaker 1: got their costumes going, and that really brought it to
22:47
Speaker 1: the forefront. Uh. And then Donald Duck Uh. There was
22:50
Speaker 1: a cartoon Donald Duck Tricker Treat a year after that
22:53
Speaker 1: that had Donald working with his nephews or trying to
22:56
Speaker 1: prank his nephews while they were trick or treating and
23:00
Speaker 1: working with the witch. And then the candy companies get involved.
23:03
Speaker 1: There was also a very famous costume company called ben
23:07
Speaker 1: Cooper Costumes did like the cheap yes plastic mask like
23:12
Speaker 1: a vinyl smot, but they had this really great talent
23:16
Speaker 1: of identifying what was going to be like a culture
23:19
Speaker 1: phenomenon before it ever blew up to get the right
23:22
Speaker 1: cheap but they were also making these things like ten
23:25
Speaker 1: months before, so they really had to have foresight and
23:28
Speaker 1: they were really good at it. But the fact that
23:30
Speaker 1: you could get cheap, amazing costumes that the little kids
23:33
Speaker 1: all wanted of their favorite characters that definitely helped things
23:37
Speaker 1: along too. Yeah, it was It's hard to overstate like
23:41
Speaker 1: how big of a deal it was to a kid
23:43
Speaker 1: to be the certain whatever they wanted to be. I
23:46
Speaker 1: think it's still that way. I'm sure it is, but
23:49
Speaker 1: now it's a lot easier, I think to buy costumes.
23:52
Speaker 1: I think when you and I were kids, there's a
23:54
Speaker 1: lot of fashioning costumes. Uh, When you didn't have the
23:58
Speaker 1: ability to be like the in from Alien or you know,
24:03
Speaker 1: it was a lot harder to put together these elaborate costumes.
24:06
Speaker 1: But once you get your heart set on it, you
24:07
Speaker 1: like you had to, you know. So I'm going to
24:10
Speaker 1: tell you my best costume, and you tell me yours. Okay, okay, um,
24:14
Speaker 1: my mom made one from scratch. Clown is a clown costume.
24:19
Speaker 1: But the big kicker was that it was an upside
24:22
Speaker 1: down clown walking on his hands. So my feet were
24:25
Speaker 1: the clown's hands. His head is like dangling between my legs.
24:29
Speaker 1: I've got his legs sticking up off of my shoulders
24:31
Speaker 1: and I don't remember my head must have been covered
24:33
Speaker 1: up like I was in his butt or something like, right,
24:35
Speaker 1: but I was upside down walking clown. Greatest costume ever? Yeah,
24:39
Speaker 1: you got any pictures somewhere? YEA. Yeah. I did a
24:42
Speaker 1: lot of funny ones, like my brother and I were
24:45
Speaker 1: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. When I was really little um.
24:49
Speaker 1: But then I got into like I was always wanting
24:52
Speaker 1: to do like funny characters. I like, like like Ed
24:54
Speaker 1: Grimley one year, the Saturday Night Live character. I did
24:57
Speaker 1: Ed Grimley one year, and I was I don't know
24:59
Speaker 1: if like I was always trying to make people laugh.
25:01
Speaker 1: I never did scary stuff until little kids started coming
25:04
Speaker 1: around and trick or treating me at your house. Yes,
25:07
Speaker 1: and you started just like movie characters. Like even into
25:10
Speaker 1: my adult years, you know, I would try and find
25:12
Speaker 1: some cool movie character, like Hi from Raising Arizona. I
25:16
Speaker 1: did one year. It's almost a grimly same here. Uh No,
25:20
Speaker 1: not same at all, actually uh. And then one year
25:24
Speaker 1: I did a great actually won a contest in New
25:26
Speaker 1: Jersey one year when I was a hardy Kushner and
25:30
Speaker 1: I like, I shaved my head. I did the whole thing.
25:33
Speaker 1: I had literature. I passed out. Wow, I made the
25:36
Speaker 1: whole the whole deal. You just ended up joining a
25:38
Speaker 1: local chapter for a little while. It was fine, really
25:41
Speaker 1: got into the rule. But I haven't. It's been a
25:44
Speaker 1: few years since I've dressed up here because I just, oh,
25:50
Speaker 1: that's not true. I haven't been. I haven't been to
25:51
Speaker 1: a Halloween party in probably five years. What were you
25:55
Speaker 1: last year? I was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, So
26:00
Speaker 1: you were you but with a tie exactly and like
26:02
Speaker 1: a giant inflatable brick cell phone. And you me was
26:06
Speaker 1: a specific Michael Jackson. A moment of Michael Jackson's history
26:12
Speaker 1: where he's holding blanket over the balcon and Momo was blanket.
26:17
Speaker 1: It's on you can see it on Instagram. That's great.
26:20
Speaker 1: You have to check that out, alright. So the candy
26:23
Speaker 1: company started getting involved. That's where I left off in
26:26
Speaker 1: the costume company. They knew it was gold from them,
26:29
Speaker 1: mars Uh Incorporated. In the early nineteen fifties, We're doing
26:34
Speaker 1: ad campaigns on TV and in newspapers and on the
26:37
Speaker 1: radio and stuff about trick or treat um it became
26:41
Speaker 1: a thing with UNICEF. They had a Trick or Treat
26:44
Speaker 1: for UNICEF campaign back then. I think they still might,
26:47
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I'm talking about the little boxes
26:49
Speaker 1: holds change and they would just give them too little kids.
26:52
Speaker 1: And while they wrote Trick or Treat, and they'd also
26:54
Speaker 1: asked for change for unisf to help needy kids overseas.
26:58
Speaker 1: And that actually when he really long way to legitimizing
27:01
Speaker 1: trick or treating. Yeah, they're doing a lot in these days.
27:03
Speaker 1: Two for kids, special needs kids, like it's it's taken
27:07
Speaker 1: this long to finally get the word out, like the
27:10
Speaker 1: blue pumpkins. Have you heard of those? If you trick
27:12
Speaker 1: or treat with a blue pumpkin, that means that you
27:15
Speaker 1: have some sort of special need where you may not
27:17
Speaker 1: be able to walk to a front door and say,
27:19
Speaker 1: trick or treat. I'm dressed as you know Michigan j
27:22
Speaker 1: bullfrog what it would be a great it would be.
27:27
Speaker 1: But did you pull that off of I just made Yeah. Wow, nice.
27:31
Speaker 1: He's been on my mind lately, I guess. But uh
27:35
Speaker 1: so people know like, oh, you've got a blue pumpkin,
27:38
Speaker 1: so I shouldn't say, like, you know, come on, kid,
27:40
Speaker 1: why don't you tell me what your costume is? And uh,
27:43
Speaker 1: it's good though, like that it's taken It's ironic that
27:47
Speaker 1: it's taken this long to get parents on board to
27:50
Speaker 1: the fact that some kids need, you know, different kinds
27:53
Speaker 1: of treatment. I don't know if ironic is the best
27:56
Speaker 1: word as much as disappointing is. Yeah, you know, you're
27:59
Speaker 1: probably right. Should we take another break? Oh my god?
28:03
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to take three more. Okay, yes we will.
28:06
Speaker 1: Then stuff you should stuftuff you should you should know alright,
28:40
Speaker 1: So I think basically what we were saying when we
28:43
Speaker 1: left off. And sorry about the nostalgia here everybody, but
28:46
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, you get us in a room. Yeah,
28:49
Speaker 1: around Halloween, it's gonna happen. Um. So, by the early fifties,
28:54
Speaker 1: trigger treating was huge and established and had so if
28:58
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty was the Heyday, the golden age of
29:02
Speaker 1: trick or treating, um, nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty nine
29:07
Speaker 1: was the salad days of the Heyday? Right? And when
29:11
Speaker 1: did people start complaining about it the seventies? No, as
29:16
Speaker 1: far back as the twenties, Oh yeah, because those newspaper
29:20
Speaker 1: articles that you can track the progress of Halloween, more
29:24
Speaker 1: often than not they were like old cranks complaining about
29:28
Speaker 1: how they didn't want to have to give tricks or
29:30
Speaker 1: treats or whatever the little kids. Don't you blackmail me?
29:34
Speaker 1: They don't. Yeah, exactly, you know, what are we teaching
29:36
Speaker 1: our kids? And there's actually, um if you kind of
29:39
Speaker 1: scratch beneath the surface of trick or treating, at first,
29:42
Speaker 1: it appears to be kind of a weird power struggle
29:45
Speaker 1: between kids and adults, and it definitely is that. But
29:49
Speaker 1: there's also another power struggle going on between adults of
29:53
Speaker 1: two different minds, ones who are like you are overparenting
29:57
Speaker 1: by being upset about this or this is just one
30:00
Speaker 1: night a year, it's good for kids, and other people
30:03
Speaker 1: are saying like this is terrible for kids, well, allowing
30:06
Speaker 1: them to go from house to house to beg is
30:08
Speaker 1: it just a bad idea? It's unsafe is another way
30:11
Speaker 1: to put it too. So there's like a struggle weirdly
30:14
Speaker 1: over trick or treating, and it has to do with
30:15
Speaker 1: under parenting and over parenting and that conversation about the
30:19
Speaker 1: whole thing. I have seen parents ruined kids experiences, whether
30:24
Speaker 1: it's like a Easter egg hunt or trick or treating.
30:28
Speaker 1: I've seen this in action because they're too involved. Yeah,
30:33
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it comes down to, is just
30:35
Speaker 1: how involved are you and your kids trick or treating.
30:37
Speaker 1: For a very brief period, there was very little involvement
30:42
Speaker 1: in kids trick or treating um and a lot of
30:46
Speaker 1: people say that's actually really good for kids. In this
30:49
Speaker 1: other way that we've kind of started to evolve toward
30:51
Speaker 1: is not. Yeah, I don't remember my parents taking me
30:54
Speaker 1: around trick or treating. I'm sure that happened maybe when
30:57
Speaker 1: I was really little, and we certainly would have had
30:59
Speaker 1: to go somewhere else because you know, I've lived on
31:02
Speaker 1: the dirt road, the dirt road with no no neighbors,
31:07
Speaker 1: um or very few of them. But I just all
31:10
Speaker 1: my memories stem from being like probably ten to fifteen
31:15
Speaker 1: and being completely on my own with my friends ten
31:18
Speaker 1: to fifteen, ten years old. But to fifteen, that's pretty late.
31:23
Speaker 1: What to trick or treat? Oh? Now, we trick or
31:25
Speaker 1: treated up until probably the like the ninth or tenth grade. Well,
31:29
Speaker 1: we'll get to it. But in some places you get
31:31
Speaker 1: to get arrested for that. When did you stop? You'd
31:35
Speaker 1: still trick or treat if they would let you. Uh.
31:40
Speaker 1: I think I stopped around thirteen. Maybe fifteen was too late.
31:43
Speaker 1: Maybe thirteen or fourteen you're fine enough. Teens, great, go
31:46
Speaker 1: with God. No, but you're you're probably right now that
31:50
Speaker 1: I'll look back. Maybe I went to Halloween parties, but
31:52
Speaker 1: maybe there's kind of an unofficial slash official again in
31:56
Speaker 1: some places, UM cut off after twelve? Really done? Yeah,
32:00
Speaker 1: because their teen you're a teenager now, and that's that's
32:02
Speaker 1: not kids stuff. As we'll see, it's allegedly trick or
32:06
Speaker 1: treating is a transition from kidhood to adulthood. And by
32:09
Speaker 1: the time you're thirteen, you've you've made in that transition
32:12
Speaker 1: that's in your past. It's sad, but it's I don't
32:15
Speaker 1: know why I'm talking like Christopher walk and all of
32:17
Speaker 1: a sudden, but I am. Yeah, maybe I wasn't going
32:22
Speaker 1: that late, but I definitely remember going by myself at
32:24
Speaker 1: a certain point. But now with my neighborhood is just
32:28
Speaker 1: the I see mostly parents not involved at all. They're
32:31
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of like if your child is two
32:35
Speaker 1: or three, helping them walk to the door and stuff.
32:37
Speaker 1: But otherwise we're just drinking and the kids are doing
32:40
Speaker 1: their things. So let's talk about this. Then let's skip
32:43
Speaker 1: towards the end and we'll jump back. Okay, there is
32:47
Speaker 1: um this debate over you know, whether it's better to
32:52
Speaker 1: just kind of cross your fingers and and hope for
32:55
Speaker 1: the best and let your kids go out and trick
32:57
Speaker 1: or treat on their own, whether that's good or whether
33:02
Speaker 1: we need to Um, the world is just too unsafe
33:05
Speaker 1: for that, and we need to much more manage kids
33:07
Speaker 1: trigger treating than just letting them go out on their own.
33:10
Speaker 1: It depends on where you are. That's the big divide.
33:13
Speaker 1: And one of my personal heroes, the World's Worst Mom,
33:16
Speaker 1: Lenore Scnazzi, who came up with the Free Range Kid's
33:20
Speaker 1: blog and the whole movement. Frankly, she makes this really
33:24
Speaker 1: great point that when we let kids trigger treat, we
33:31
Speaker 1: let them confront danger like on their own, and it's real,
33:36
Speaker 1: it's just a thin the narrowest margin of danger. I mean,
33:39
Speaker 1: people always talk about like the um, you know, all
33:42
Speaker 1: like the worst things that could happen on Halloween when
33:45
Speaker 1: the kids out of trigger treating, getting hit by a car,
33:47
Speaker 1: getting kidnapped by a stranger, getting like, um, yes, just
33:52
Speaker 1: just stuff that it happens, and it can happen, It's true,
33:56
Speaker 1: but it happens so infrequently that the chain its is
34:00
Speaker 1: are it's not going to happen, and you're actually better
34:02
Speaker 1: off just letting the kid roll the dice. Because, as
34:06
Speaker 1: Lenora skanas He puts it, when when you go trick
34:09
Speaker 1: or treating, you're transitioning from being a kid to a
34:11
Speaker 1: grown up and you're doing this quite literally. Um, you
34:14
Speaker 1: go with your parents first, and they kind of teach
34:17
Speaker 1: you the rules of the road, like just take one
34:19
Speaker 1: piece of candy, or that house over there has their
34:22
Speaker 1: lights off, so leave them alone. They don't want to
34:24
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this. And then after that
34:27
Speaker 1: you let them go on their own right, and they
34:30
Speaker 1: kind of take the ball and roll with it. And
34:32
Speaker 1: she says that, Um, that when they're all trick or
34:35
Speaker 1: treating kids dressed like grown ups, they take to the
34:38
Speaker 1: streets night, they encounter the scariest possible locals, which is
34:42
Speaker 1: in goblins, and then yes, they're doing it as scaries
34:45
Speaker 1: as possible time night and the whole thing is dress
34:47
Speaker 1: rehearsal for adulthood, and that like that's the benefit of
34:51
Speaker 1: trick or treating. I don't quite get that that is
34:55
Speaker 1: the same as adulthood. Like you and I all the
34:57
Speaker 1: time walking around night fighting goblins in a way, right
34:59
Speaker 1: exact where would we have been without trick or treating
35:02
Speaker 1: to preparis for fighting goblins? But just confronting fears are
35:06
Speaker 1: on their own without their parents managing their world for
35:09
Speaker 1: them so that they can handle themselves, have the confidence
35:13
Speaker 1: to know they can handle themselves and um, and and
35:17
Speaker 1: I guess feel good about having confronted their fears and
35:20
Speaker 1: gotten candy in return. Let's not forget about that now.
35:23
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's just just take the candies. Fine,
35:28
Speaker 1: Mommy and Daddy made it perfect for you. All you
35:30
Speaker 1: have to do is go get the candy. You're in
35:32
Speaker 1: a perfect bubble and everything's fine. Yeah. So that's I
35:36
Speaker 1: kind of tend to fall on Leonore Skanazis side on that. Well,
35:39
Speaker 1: should we talk a little bit about the um, you know,
35:43
Speaker 1: whether or not there have been all these real horror
35:45
Speaker 1: stories over the years, and whether or not any of
35:48
Speaker 1: those are true as far as the razor blade in
35:50
Speaker 1: the apple and stuff like that, hypodermic needles and candy. Um,
35:55
Speaker 1: the stuff doesn't happen. No. And the thing to point out,
35:59
Speaker 1: and I know we've talked about it before, is that
36:02
Speaker 1: it was a an urban legend that came true. Right. Uh,
36:06
Speaker 1: there was one case and this is actually kind of
36:08
Speaker 1: funny if he asked me. In nine there was a
36:11
Speaker 1: dentist in California named WILLIAMS. Shine who uh it, took
36:17
Speaker 1: alo laxative pills and disguised them as candy and give
36:20
Speaker 1: out four and fifty of them jerk two kids, and
36:24
Speaker 1: they were all poop. And I guess so I think
36:26
Speaker 1: a fume did poop. Nobody got injured, though right now
36:29
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get injured from a laxative over poop,
36:33
Speaker 1: over poop. But this is when I think this real
36:38
Speaker 1: story got out. And then all of a sudden he
36:41
Speaker 1: gets morphed into needles and razor blades or poison or
36:46
Speaker 1: candy laced with heroin and stuff like that. Well that
36:49
Speaker 1: did happen. Well, yeah, but that's the thing, Like the
36:52
Speaker 1: examples that are listed are reverse engineered almost right, right,
36:56
Speaker 1: So there was a little boy in Texas who died
36:59
Speaker 1: from eating a cyanide um laced pixie stick in Texas,
37:04
Speaker 1: and I can't remember what you and um. It turned
37:09
Speaker 1: out that it was his dad. That his dad was
37:11
Speaker 1: the scum of the earth who had taken taken out
37:14
Speaker 1: insurance policies on his own children and then gave them
37:17
Speaker 1: spiked Halloween candy to make it look like some mad
37:20
Speaker 1: poison or he killed his kids so he could collect
37:22
Speaker 1: insurance and one of his kids did die, but it
37:25
Speaker 1: was it wasn't just some random Halloween poisoner that guy
37:28
Speaker 1: didn't really exist at the time. Yeah, nineteen seventy in
37:32
Speaker 1: Detroit was the heroin incident. Um, this kid overdose, these
37:38
Speaker 1: kids ate their uncle's stash, is what really happened. And
37:41
Speaker 1: then the uncles like, oh, crap, let me sprinkle the
37:45
Speaker 1: heroin on the candy and cook up the story and
37:48
Speaker 1: maybe cook up some heroin right since I'm cooking, and uh,
37:52
Speaker 1: to try and get out of this. So again, it
37:56
Speaker 1: really happened, but not in the way that you think. Um,
37:59
Speaker 1: the thing that out everybody, So that Williams Shine guy,
38:02
Speaker 1: who I just think is a skull for that because
38:04
Speaker 1: he scared the pants off of America's parents. He basically said, hey, hey,
38:09
Speaker 1: you know how you're letting your kids run free. Something
38:11
Speaker 1: really bad had happened to him, and I just showed
38:13
Speaker 1: you how. And from the that that next year on,
38:17
Speaker 1: the parents were anxiously involved in Halloween like they never
38:20
Speaker 1: have been before because of Williams Shine. But um, the
38:25
Speaker 1: the thing that really killed Halloween, or at least cementuted.
38:29
Speaker 1: I think the anxieties in the heads of parents in
38:31
Speaker 1: America is that Thailand all poisoner canceled Halloween two almost
38:37
Speaker 1: drove Ben Cooper costumes out of business, candy sales went down.
38:43
Speaker 1: Trick or treated, well, your parents didn't love you. I
38:48
Speaker 1: think I did too. I don't remember not I would
38:50
Speaker 1: remember not trick or treating one year, because that would
38:53
Speaker 1: have been eleven. That's prime time. Apparently those are the
38:56
Speaker 1: retirement years. But all of this stuff added a veneer
39:01
Speaker 1: of fear and anxiety on trick or treating for parents,
39:04
Speaker 1: not for kids necessarily, but for parents, and it drew
39:08
Speaker 1: them into what was possibly just a kid run activity
39:13
Speaker 1: because of fear, probably irrational fear. And now you have
39:17
Speaker 1: to this day, the f d A sending out guidelines
39:20
Speaker 1: around Halloween saying don't let your kids eat any candy
39:23
Speaker 1: until they bring it home, which is just torture, and
39:27
Speaker 1: you have to inspect it and if you see any
39:29
Speaker 1: pinholes or terrors or anything that looks weird, just thrown away.
39:32
Speaker 1: Some hospitals say bring your kids candy and well X
39:34
Speaker 1: ray to see if there's any razor blades or needles
39:38
Speaker 1: in it or something like that. This is the kind
39:40
Speaker 1: of terror that ironically is overlaid on Halloween. It's like
39:44
Speaker 1: fun terror has actual real terror on top of it,
39:48
Speaker 1: which makes it less fun. We don't inspect candy. Oh
39:52
Speaker 1: you don't you roll the dice? Huh, yeah, that's great.
39:56
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone who does. Really. Oh man was
40:00
Speaker 1: raised like that? You inspected candy? Oh yeah, my parents
40:03
Speaker 1: were serious about it. We never did. I don't now.
40:07
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. Maybe it's that thing of
40:10
Speaker 1: like if you're the because it doesn't happen, right, I'm no,
40:14
Speaker 1: I'm hardened to hear that. Yeah, because when we did
40:17
Speaker 1: our Free Range Kids episode, I remember thinking, like, what's
40:20
Speaker 1: what's going on now? Like like kids are treated like this,
40:23
Speaker 1: They're not by Halloween candy. It's just not happening, you know.
40:29
Speaker 1: Plus in our neighborhood, with the sanctioned closure, all the
40:33
Speaker 1: candy is, people aren't buying their own candy. It's like
40:36
Speaker 1: the neighborhood buys all the candy and they congregated in
40:40
Speaker 1: these couple of blocks. Yeah, okay, I mean, there could
40:44
Speaker 1: be a madman living among us. It happens, but that's
40:47
Speaker 1: like being scared to walk out your front door for
40:49
Speaker 1: fear of being murdered, right right, Chuck, You know you
40:53
Speaker 1: just can't live that way. I can't live that way,
40:56
Speaker 1: you know. Umi told me a story about a village
40:59
Speaker 1: like villages in Japan and have like a festival or
41:01
Speaker 1: two every year, like the whole community comes out. It's
41:03
Speaker 1: like a big deal. And there was one village, a
41:06
Speaker 1: little tiny town where um, this one woman just I guess,
41:11
Speaker 1: went mad and poison the curry that you brought to
41:14
Speaker 1: the village thing and killed a bunch of townspeople. It happens.
41:19
Speaker 1: It does happen. But you're right. You can't not eat
41:22
Speaker 1: the curry just because of the small, small chance that
41:27
Speaker 1: some mad person has poisoned it. Yeah. The way I
41:30
Speaker 1: look at it is if that that's what happens, then
41:32
Speaker 1: that's you know, your numbers up, your numbers up in
41:35
Speaker 1: your story in the newspaper to scare other people. You
41:40
Speaker 1: get to be immortalized on stuff. You should know. It's
41:42
Speaker 1: trick or treat. Going away, Josh, I don't know, Chuck,
41:46
Speaker 1: I say, no, Okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that,
41:49
Speaker 1: because again I'm living hashtag condo life. I'm out of
41:52
Speaker 1: the action. Yeah, I mean, there's this the last bit
41:55
Speaker 1: of this article you sent talked about it, um going
41:57
Speaker 1: away potentially, But I just I don't think that's ever
42:00
Speaker 1: ever going to happen. So what are your arguments for
42:03
Speaker 1: it going away that it might my arguments or is
42:07
Speaker 1: my observations your observations? Um. One of the big ones
42:11
Speaker 1: is that fear among parents that helicopter parenting has not
42:14
Speaker 1: been good for trick or treating. Okay, but but think
42:18
Speaker 1: about that's a real struggle going on right now over
42:21
Speaker 1: parenting versus under parenting, which one is gonna win out? Okay.
42:26
Speaker 1: Another one is there's a perception that that trick or
42:29
Speaker 1: treating is dying out, which is kind of funny. Yes,
42:33
Speaker 1: because people are moving back into towns and gentrifying those towns,
42:37
Speaker 1: like we talked about in the Historic District episode, Um,
42:41
Speaker 1: and as they're doing that. Trick or treating was never
42:44
Speaker 1: huge in the city, and so people who are raising
42:47
Speaker 1: the suburbs and were used to are moving into the
42:49
Speaker 1: city and there's no trick or treating going on anymore.
42:52
Speaker 1: So I guess trick or treating is dying because that's
42:54
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing a differ. I beg to differ with
42:56
Speaker 1: that too, Okay, but I mean, you don't live in
42:59
Speaker 1: the city city, you live in a neighborhood. Yeah, But
43:03
Speaker 1: that's all Atlanta is is a bunch of neighborhoods. Okay,
43:05
Speaker 1: you mean I don't live downtown. Maybe these people live
43:07
Speaker 1: in Des Moines. I don't know. No one lives in
43:09
Speaker 1: downtown Atlanta. No, it's true, although it has gotten cooler
43:12
Speaker 1: than it was like a decade ago. But I beg
43:16
Speaker 1: to differ that trick or treating doesn't go on in
43:18
Speaker 1: the cities. I think I think their apartment buildings in
43:21
Speaker 1: New York where people trick or treat, like, just because
43:23
Speaker 1: it's not the picket fence suburban neighborhood. I think trick
43:28
Speaker 1: or treating goes on everywhere. But this author at my house,
43:31
Speaker 1: Julie Beck, who wrote in The Atlantic, she put it
43:34
Speaker 1: really well that that basically the suburbs and trick or
43:37
Speaker 1: treating just go hand in hand. Sure, like the suburbs
43:40
Speaker 1: are set up for trick or treating. You've got houses
43:43
Speaker 1: that are close together, super safe, Um yep, where people
43:46
Speaker 1: who live there are just well enough off to to
43:48
Speaker 1: buy enough candy for the whole neighborhood. Yeah. Um, they
43:51
Speaker 1: all have kids. They know each other enough that you're
43:54
Speaker 1: not embarrassed for your kid to go up in trick
43:55
Speaker 1: or treat there. And you know that it's this candy
43:57
Speaker 1: is not going to be poisoned. In the city, you're
44:00
Speaker 1: much um more uh isolated from one another, even though
44:04
Speaker 1: you're living on top of one another. Yeah, and I
44:07
Speaker 1: think maybe if if we're talking about like UH areas
44:11
Speaker 1: where there are poor kids and where poverty is run rampant,
44:15
Speaker 1: then maybe there's less traditional trick or treating, but there
44:18
Speaker 1: are programs and parties and things they try to do
44:21
Speaker 1: for those kids too. Okay, so those very things may
44:24
Speaker 1: end up being what kills trick or treating that I
44:27
Speaker 1: should say, the purest version of trick or treating. You
44:30
Speaker 1: can also just make the case, well that's what it's
44:32
Speaker 1: evolving into, and just go with it. I think it
44:34
Speaker 1: will probably be both. But you're talking about the big
44:38
Speaker 1: Halloween parties, community parties, trunk or treating, trunk or treating,
44:42
Speaker 1: or what's it called Halloween, Halloween tailgating, trunk treating. This
44:47
Speaker 1: is the idea that you and we had this at
44:50
Speaker 1: our school. We had the Halloween festival, but that did
44:52
Speaker 1: not replace trick or treating. Okay, this replaces trick or
44:55
Speaker 1: treating for a lot of children. Yeah, So you go
44:58
Speaker 1: out and get in a big church parking lot essentially,
45:00
Speaker 1: and you have uh, bobbing for apples and the dunk tank.
45:05
Speaker 1: This is different and huh this is a little different
45:08
Speaker 1: than that. Well, I mean I've seen these in person,
45:12
Speaker 1: and uh, okay, but that's a Halloween festival you're talking about.
45:15
Speaker 1: No, No No, I'm talking about instead of trick or treating.
45:17
Speaker 1: It's a big party where they have candy and they
45:21
Speaker 1: have activities and games and stuff. So are you going
45:23
Speaker 1: from car to car getting candy like the cars or houses?
45:28
Speaker 1: Uh no, not necessarily, but they're giving out candy. I mean,
45:33
Speaker 1: I can you're not talking about trunker treating. It feels
45:35
Speaker 1: very nitpicky to me. No, but it's not. And here's
45:37
Speaker 1: why I'm not talking about Halloween festival though. Okay, that's fine,
45:40
Speaker 1: that's fine, But you're not talking about trunk or treating either.
45:43
Speaker 1: You mean you walk five ft to a car and
45:46
Speaker 1: they give you candy, then five ft to another and
45:49
Speaker 1: they say, don't play any games, don't bob for apples,
45:51
Speaker 1: or don't do anything else. All you're doing is walking
45:53
Speaker 1: to cars. I'm not saying that they don't have bobbing
45:55
Speaker 1: for apples, but the purpose of trunk or treating is
45:59
Speaker 1: to basically set up a safe ring of cars where
46:02
Speaker 1: the kids are literally penned in. The kids who used
46:05
Speaker 1: to be the ones who we're running the show are
46:08
Speaker 1: now penned in by the anxious adults cars handing out
46:12
Speaker 1: candy rather than going to houses, walking around a church
46:15
Speaker 1: parking lot for trunk or treating instead of trick or treating.
46:19
Speaker 1: These are not the kids who could pull what the
46:22
Speaker 1: kids in the goonies did were able to pull off
46:25
Speaker 1: because they had freedom and spark. That kids who trunk
46:28
Speaker 1: or treat are being denied that as Let me go
46:31
Speaker 1: back to my friend Leonora Sknazi. She says, the trunk
46:34
Speaker 1: or treating is just another adult led activity, one that
46:38
Speaker 1: reinforces the community killing idea that kids aren't ever safe
46:42
Speaker 1: outside the home, school or supervised program. And that is
46:45
Speaker 1: most definitely the message that kids get when they're trunk
46:49
Speaker 1: or treating. Yeah, I think that is not going to
46:52
Speaker 1: kill trick or treating or take over trick or treating.
46:56
Speaker 1: We'll see, Chuck. I hope you're right, because one thing
46:59
Speaker 1: I have not seen since I've lived in Atlanta is
47:02
Speaker 1: any big trunk or treating. Well, that's because you live
47:07
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. All you have to do is go out
47:09
Speaker 1: to the suburbs, and they're everywhere. But the suburbs are
47:12
Speaker 1: made for trick or treating. They're out in the neighborhoods.
47:14
Speaker 1: I gotta end on a quote I ran across a
47:16
Speaker 1: a website, I guess a church website that's talking about
47:22
Speaker 1: trunk or treating. It's awesome this quote. It says that
47:26
Speaker 1: the scariest part about the night this is a trunk
47:29
Speaker 1: or treating night, isn't the costumes. It's the possibility that
47:33
Speaker 1: you could miss out on the chance to use trunk
47:35
Speaker 1: or treat to build relationships and reach these kids with
47:38
Speaker 1: the gospel. Well yeah, that's the opposite of what Halloween
47:41
Speaker 1: is all about. That's right. Um, you got anything else,
47:44
Speaker 1: it's about arson of it. Sorry, I'm one of those
47:49
Speaker 1: curmudgeons that turns out. Uh. One more thing. If you
47:54
Speaker 1: like Halloween, go on to our old stuff you should
47:56
Speaker 1: Know website and search Halloween and creepy and you're gonna
48:01
Speaker 1: find some amazing slide shows we put together over the year.
48:04
Speaker 1: Remember that one of my favorite is um cute and
48:07
Speaker 1: cruddy Halloween costumes, vintage Halloween costumes that are really creepy.
48:12
Speaker 1: Best Jack lanards, all sorts of great stuff. Remember those
48:15
Speaker 1: days where we account page views and get excited about that. Yeah,
48:20
Speaker 1: this one felt like a bit of a tirade? Yeah
48:23
Speaker 1: was it? I don't think so? Okay, Kim, Well, if
48:25
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Halloween, get out there
48:27
Speaker 1: and trick your treat. And since I said that as
48:30
Speaker 1: time for listener, ma'am. Uh this is follow up on
48:34
Speaker 1: Paraphelia's that we wanted to read for the last few weeks.
48:39
Speaker 1: Just now get into it. Hey guys, a long time listener,
48:41
Speaker 1: first time writer. I've had this episode pop up a
48:44
Speaker 1: few times. It's just been on my mind. I'm an
48:47
Speaker 1: r N with M s N and background and have
48:51
Speaker 1: background in neuro physiology who enjoys studying abnormal psych I
48:55
Speaker 1: understand you were doing a show on psychological term on
48:58
Speaker 1: a psychological term, but you may have ended up painting
49:01
Speaker 1: wrong ideas onto certain practices, specifically S and M and
49:05
Speaker 1: cross dressing. Um. From when I have come to note,
49:08
Speaker 1: it's extremely rare that people practice these primarily for sexual gratification.
49:12
Speaker 1: Of course, these practices are adult in nature, but most
49:15
Speaker 1: regard it as an emotional practice or exploration of self.
49:19
Speaker 1: For example, Uh, shabari or rope bondage takes hundreds of
49:24
Speaker 1: hours of practice to perform, and those that partake describe
49:28
Speaker 1: a meditation like state as a result, though most would
49:31
Speaker 1: say it's s and M. Most cross dressers describe the
49:34
Speaker 1: long process of becoming female as cathartic and self affirming,
49:38
Speaker 1: although be it uh temporary. Simplifying cross dressers to those
49:42
Speaker 1: who walk around in high heels to reach completion, well,
49:46
Speaker 1: imagine saying that about a trans woman. Of course, if
49:49
Speaker 1: you were doing these practices for sexual gratification, all the
49:52
Speaker 1: power to you. I suggest you look into keenk culture
49:55
Speaker 1: as an episode. It's where a wide range of people
49:58
Speaker 1: congregate and share their interest in a commun any that
50:00
Speaker 1: has founded off respect and consent their meetups and presentations
50:04
Speaker 1: on practices so that others can learn proper technique. The
50:07
Speaker 1: most that practice would like to keep their privacy. And
50:10
Speaker 1: that is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous, that was
50:14
Speaker 1: a good correction email. That's right. If you want to
50:17
Speaker 1: get in touch with us like Anonymous did to set
50:19
Speaker 1: us straight, we love that kind of thing. You can
50:22
Speaker 1: join us at stuff you Should Know dot com and
50:24
Speaker 1: check out our social links there and you can send
50:26
Speaker 1: us an email to stuff podcast at i heeart radio
50:30
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
50:35
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my
50:38
Speaker 1: heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
50:41
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,