In the previous post, we went over Samhain and we found it bears little resemblance to the story widely told about it. Today, we look at those modern Halloween traditions we love to hate: trick-or-treating and jack-o'-lanterns. You may be surprised at what the real history actually holds. Some people are absolutely convinced Halloween is pagan because of the errors they believe about Samhain, which we addressed in the previous post. Others are convinced Halloween is pagan because of errors they believe about the traditions. Well, that is what I hope to clear up now. Today, in the last post of the series, we will go over trick-ot-treating and jack-o'-lanterns.
Please take this quote from the History.com as our introduction:
"Halloween has its roots in the ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, which was celebrated on the night of October 31. The Celts, who lived 3,000 years ago in Central and Western Europe, believed that the dead returned to earth on Samhain. On that sacred night, people gathered to light bonfires, offer sacrifices and pay homage to the dead.
During some Celtic celebrations of Samhain, villagers disguised themselves in costumes made of animal skins to drive away phantom visitors; banquet tables were prepared and food was left out to placate unwelcome spirits."
-"How Trick-or-Treating Became a Halloween Tradition", History.com, October 23, 2026.
This quote is simply abysmal. But you, my esteemed reader, have been educating yourself in this series, and I am confident that you see glaring errors in it.
It's approaching Thanksgiving now, and you might be wondering why we are still posting about Halloween. There is a method to my madness. I've said in many articles that the traditions we usually find at Halloween were once ubiquitous throughout Fall. Let us see a prime example of that.
TRICKS OR TREATS
Can trick-or-treating be traced back to pagan Druids? Hardly. This custom does not come from any one thing, but none of those things can be traced to ancient Druids, let alone Irish ones at Samhain in particular.
This is not to say that pagans never wore costumes or traipsed around, but commonality is not causality. (We have to prove that something is pagan beyond just saying the traditions look similar.) I cannot find such proof in any primary or reliable secondary sources. The evidence I have shows the history of our modern traditions is quite Christian.
The practice of dressing up in costume was called "masking" in medieval England. Putting on costume and then going around to entertain or to ask for a handout or collect charity (called 'ritualized begging') went by many names; "guising" and "mumming" for example. Most other cultures in Europe had similar traditions. For convenience, I will lump them all under the term mumming.
Mumming was surprisingly popular. It was done at many holidays throughout the year. It was a convenient way to raise money for church or charity. Sometimes the practice was called after the holiday on which it was done: "clementing" on the Feast of St. Clement (Nov. 23), "catterning" on the Feast of St. Catherine (Nov. 25), and "souling" on All Souls' Day. Souling could happen at any time during All Hallowtide, but it was particularly focused on All Souls' Day. It was not particularly focused on Halloween. The opposite, in fact. I can find no record of a medieval mumming tradition that was specific to October 31, as 'catterning' was for the St. Catherine's Day. So, how did mumming (trick-or-treat) become specific to Halloween?
Surprises are expected in October, and modern trick-or-treat has a surprise twist. Mumming on Halloween did not come from Europe to America directly, since there were no Halloween-specific mumming traditions. Instead, it came first to another popular holiday. All Souls' Day? No. America was primarily Protestant and didn't favor All Souls' Day. Instead, it came through ... Thanksgiving.
Starting in the mid-1800s and lasting through the early-1900s, there were several mumming traditions on or near Thanksgiving Day in America. I have said many times over the years that certain Halloween and Christmas traditions were done throughout the Autumn, and only later coalesced onto these days. This is now my favorite example.
I learned about this when I happened across the article "Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!" by Stephen Winick on Library of Congress Blogs. In it, he makes a concrete case that mumming on Thanksgiving predated Halloween trick-or-treating by several decades. It begins with these words:
"Happy Thanksgiving! In this post, we’ll take a look at a set of interesting photos from the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division. They depict a custom most people nowadays don’t know much about: Thanksgiving masking. Thanksgiving maskers, like trick-or-treaters on contemporary Halloween, used to go door to door, begging for handouts."
-Stephen Winick, "Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!", blogs.loc.gov, November 25, 2020.
Did you know about that? Likely not. But I bet you "knew" that trick-or-treat comes straight from the Druids (as History.com claims), even though it didn't. Mumming was so popular on Thanksgiving that New Yorkers nicknamed the day "Ragamuffin Day".
Winick goes on to say something quite revealing:
"To discuss a more specific anachronism, [Linton Weeks, of NPR] claimed that by dressing up at Thanksgiving and going door to door looking for treats, the people in these photos 'effectively created a mash-up of Halloween and Turkey Day.' This idea could only occur to someone looking back at these pictures from a later time, for the simple reason that Thanksgiving masking predates trick-or-treating in the United States. When these pictures were taken, kids did play in the streets and play tricks on Halloween night, and adults held masquerade balls, but trick-or-treating as we know it did not exist, and children didn’t dress in raggedy costumes or go from house to house on Halloween. These might look like Halloween pictures to us, but they didn’t look anything like Halloween in 1910."
-Stephen Winick, "Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!", blogs.loc.gov, November 25, 2020.
And there you have it. That article has links to several sources and terms which should help you on your way to learning more about this if you are interested.
Most of the Thanksgiving mumming traditions were specifically found in New York City. However, when I dug through old newspaper records, I began to find the same activities had spread to other areas around the country. I have found several references to an 1897 Los Angeles Times article stating Thanksgiving was one of the busiest times of the year for manufacturers of false faces and masks. That Masking and Mumming article cites this same, but from Chicago. That means this was probably syndicated and printed in several papers across the country.
You might wonder, how can these traditions happen around Thanksgiving before there was a Thanksgiving Day? The answer seems to be that Thanksgiving mumming does not come from any single people group or tradition. America is the Great Melting Pot after all, and the Old World brought many autumn customs and traditions to the New World. In the 1860s-70s, they came together at Thanksgiving, apparently starting in New York. It wouldn't be until the 1920s that they began to migrate to Halloween.
Yes, that's right, your ancient Druidic Halloween trick-or-treat custom really comes from the 1930s.
"In the important article 'Trick or Treat: Pre-Texts and Contexts,' which appeared in this edited volume by Jack Santino [a link to a book is provided in the original article, which I will put at the end of this post], folklorist Tad Tuleja dates American trick-or-treating to the 1930s, and points out that even in the 1940s articles about Halloween traditions do not mention it, suggesting it did not become truly widespread until later"
-Stephen Winick, "Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!", blogs.loc.gov, November 25, 2020.
All this talk about Druids and costumes to scare away demons is rather pointless after that. And you should know the phrase "trick-or-treat" is credited to Canada, from the early-1900s. The earliest known documented evidence of this phrase is from the November 1, 1917 edition of the Sault Daily Star (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada), which reported that children were calling out “tricks or treats.” I thought "tricks or treats" was just an oddity found in the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Halloween Special. Apparently not. By 1927, the now familiar "trick or treat" appears in the historical record, also in Canada.
Our modern Halloween trick-or-treating tradition is an American phenomenon from the 1930s. We know that Halloween activities in the 1800s included adults going to masquerade balls, but that says nothing about children. As the popular story goes, kids caused trouble on Halloween, and somebody got the bright idea to dress them up and send them trick-or-treating to keep them out of trouble. Is that how it really went? I don't know. It is supported and makes sense. But skip a few years, and children are still doing the same thing to this day.
That is your true history of trick-or-treating. Do you recall the quote from The Sun which opened this series? Here is a refresher: "Trick or treating may seem like a modern event, but it can actually be traced back to Celtic Britain and Ireland in the 9th century." Now how do you feel about that?
Many modern Evangelical Christians have modified trick-or-treating into "trunk-or-treat", where children do not go door-to-door but car-to-car. At first, it was popularized as a way to push back against the accusations surrounding Halloween, most of which we now know are false. That reason seems rather superfluous knowing what we know now. Trunk-or-treat is still a much safer and more controlled environment, however, and that's a perfectly good reason to keep doing it.
That Halloween costumes have recently become increasingly dark and grotesque does not in any way mean they always were, much less that they must be. Fallen things happen in a fallen world. As for me, I feel our job is not to declare defeat and scurry away, but to oppose this darker direction. There are plenty of harmless and even wholesome alternatives to the morbid.
And now, about those pumpkins...
JACK-O'-LANTERNS
The term "jack-o'-lantern" and similar phrases did not originally refer to a carved vegetable. By the mid-1600s, these related expressions were being used both for night watchmen carrying lanterns and for mysterious wandering lights in marshes and bogs, also called will-o'-the-wisps or fool's fire.
As for the tradition of vegetable-carving, the oldest extant written record of the custom is also from the mid-1600s. That is considerably later than the pagan Irish Druid origins you have heard about. A 1640 letter by English writer James Howell describes a turnip carved like a death's head with a candle inside, used to frighten people. That is the earliest reference we have. But they were not called jack-o-lanterns at this time.
The earliest reference we have of carved vegetables being called 'jack-o-lantern' comes from the mid-1800s. In 1837, the Limerick Chronicle reported a carved-gourd competition, awarding a prize for the “best crown of Jack McLantern.” It was after this, in the 1840s, that the term jack-o'-lantern and the tradition of carved pumpkins were brought together.
Now we have carved vegetables, lights, and the term jack-o'-lantern all in the same place. But you might not have noticed that we are missing one final ingredient: Halloween.
By the late-1800s, reports appear which explicitly connect illuminated carved pumpkins with Halloween in North America. But that makes me curious about what happened before the late 1800s? Would you believe ... Thanksgiving again?
Jack-o'-lanterns were not exclusively a Halloween custom. Ronald Hutton, in "Stations of the Sun", mentions carved vegetables at Christmas time. Also, take the following quote from the New York Times November 24, 1895 edition, titled "The Day We Celebrate; Thanksgiving Treated Gastronomically and Socially". The article is about how to host a good Thanksgiving. In a section about how to entertain the children, it suggests a scavenger hunt for nuts, then it says:
"A 'booby' prize, that never fails to please the children, is an old-fashioned jack o' lantern, made from a small pumpkin, and brought in lighted, on a salver, to be presented to the luckless nut hunter."
Ccarved vegetables happened throughout the Autumn. Only later did the custom migrate to become exclusively a Halloween custom, as we see it today.
So, jack-o'-lanterns are relatively recent and were used throughout the Fall holidays, therefore they cannot be evidence that Halloween came from paganism any more than Thanksgiving did. The case that Halloween comes specifically from ancient, pagan Samhain is quite overstated. Believe it or not, Christians have imaginations, too.
CONCLUSION
In the first post, we learned about how Halloween is misunderstood. In the second post, we learned how Samhain is misunderstood. Today, we've learned how Halloween traditions are misunderstood. And now you know why I am still putting up these posts after Halloween ... because Halloween history is Thanksgiving history.
So, for all those people who cry rivers over the pagan origins of Halloween customs, you can rest comfortably knowing the Thanksgiving you celebrate once had trick-or-treat well before Halloween did, and jack-o'-lantern customs, too. Those old, tired excuses of "it's pagan" or "it imitates what Druids did" etc etc are simply false.
My objective in this series is truth. It is not to convince anyone to celebrate Halloween. If you don't want to, then don't. It's not required. But at least be honest with yourself about why you've chosen as you have. Someone might say to me, "You've cleared up a few things, but I still cannot see how this day honors God," and you know what, that's fine. I think the better question than "does it glorify God" is "can it glorify God", and I believe the answer to that is yes. The choice before us is to either insist on making it honor God as we are able, as we do for all the other perfectly acceptable days in our lives, or to surrender and concede it to the modern culture. Take your pick. This is the exact same choice you must make whether you spend some time in a costume in late October or not. As for me, personally, I don't agree that we honor God by doing nothing. I say bring a little light into it. Since it started as a day to honor the faithful departed, perhaps we should consider returning it to that. But the least effective way to honor God would be to persist in accusing the day of being pagan despite all the evidence we've seen. That sounds too much to me like bearing false witness.
Other posts in this series:
Halloween I, Halloween II
Here is a bullet point summary covering the highlights of what we learned in this series which you can share with your family and friends and former church mates (because once you share this, surely you will be disfellowshipped):
- In 609 AD Pope Boniface IV created a memorial to all martyrs on May 13 for the diocese of Rome.
- In 731-741 AD Pope Gregory III created a memorial to all departed saints in Heaven on November 1, again for the diocese of Rome, apparently as part of his dispute with the Byzantine Emperor.
- In 835 AD Pope Gregory IV expanded the all saints memorial to the whole church.
- At some point in the 800s, the first mention of Samhain appears in Irish literature.
- The claim that Samhain was so popular that the Pope moved All Saints’ Day to co-opt it is unsupported by the historical evidence.
- There was no single Celtic culture. Samhain is distinctly Irish, and evidence from Ireland cannot automatically be applied to peoples outside Ireland.
- Samhain may have originated as a seasonal marker associated with the end of the harvest, the beginning of winter, and the annual cycle of farming and community life.
- The earliest Irish sources date Samhain to the beginning of November, but they were written in the Christian era.
- The date November 1 in the Julian calendar in 800 AD (when the earliest mentions appear) would actually be November 5 on our Gregorian calendar.
- The earliest sources do not tell us how or when Samhain first became associated with November 1, nor do they prove that the date was observed in pre-Christian Ireland.
- Detailed accounts of Samhain festivities appear in medieval Irish literature, recorded by Christian authors.
- The medieval Irish legends were recorded, adapted, or possibly developed by Christian monks. They cannot simply be treated as eyewitness accounts of ancient pagan practices.
- The Otherworld in these legends was not a realm of the dead. It was a fairy world, and was often portrayed as an alluring, beautiful world, quite unlike the frightening land of ghosts and demons described in modern Halloween-origin stories.
- Beginning in the 1500s, writers increasingly romanticized the Druids and invented a Celtic past that went well beyond the available evidence.
- The modern claim that Samhain was the Celtic New Year and a great festival of the dead was heavily influenced by nineteenth-century writers, particularly John Rhys and James Frazer.
- Modern Wicca helped popularize Samhain as a major pagan festival, but creating new customs and calling them ancient does not make them actual ancient practices.
- Nothing establishes a direct historical connection between the Druids and the Halloween customs commonly attributed to them.
- Many Halloween traditions, including costumes, going door to door for treats, and carved vegetable lanterns, have documented parallels in Christian-era customs. These traditions were often practiced throughout the autumn holidays, and some have particularly interesting connections to Thanksgiving.
- Jack-o'-lanterns have a history of their own, but there's no reliable evidence that they originated as an ancient Druidic or Samhain custom.
- Just because two customs look alike doesn't mean one came from the other. Commonality does not prove causality.
- Modern historical research is chipping away at claims about Samhain, the Druids, and Halloween that people once repeated as established fact.
Some interesting sources to help you dig further into the link between Halloween and Thanksgiving:
"Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2020/11/masking-and-mumming-for-the-holidays-thanksgiving-style/
"Unmasking a Thanksgiving Tradition Through Photos and Newspapers" on Library of Congress Blogs.
https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2015/11/unmasking-a-thanksgiving-tradition-through-photos-and-newspapers/
"The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween" on USC Dornsife.
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/ancient-irish-get-too-much-credit-for-halloween/
"Trick or Treat" on Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles 3rd Edition
https://dchp.arts.ubc.ca/entries/trick%20or%20treat
"The Jack-o-Lantern Story: Uncut and Uncensored" on lesleybannatyne.com.
https://lesleybannatyne.com/JOL.html
Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "fantasticals".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+fantasticals
Link to historical newspapers about Thanksgiving "ragamuffins".
https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?q=thanksgiving+ragamuffin
Jack Santo, "Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life", 1994. On Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/halloweenotherfe0000unse/mode/2up
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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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