Trick or Treat? — Кассета

For most of our human history, winter was an existential struggle for everyone, and late October in the Northern Hemisphere was a season of visible death. The daylight collapses fast, the harvest is in, vines and fields are put to bed, and animals are slaughtered. Up until very recently, there was no fresh produce and frozen meats all winter long at the grocery store. And any species concerned about mortality as much as man is, will naturally build ritual around the most death-saturated weeks of the year. Originally, May 13th was designated by the Church as All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows’ Day. It was later changed to November 1st under Pope Gregory, and the autumnal season of decay became the new befitting time to honor the dead. The night before All Hallows’ Day then became known as All Hallows’ Eve, which later became Halloween. Trick-or-treating is rooted in two European customs, guising and souling. Souling was a custom that emerged during the Middle Ages to celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Poor people would walk from house to house and offer prayers for dead relatives. In return, residents gave small, round flatbreads known as soul cakes, and each soul cake eaten represented a soul being released from purgatory. Guising was part of a Celtic tradition based around their folklore that otherworldly spirits, known as the Aos Sí, roamed the earth on All Hallows’ Eve, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, known astrologically as the Pleiades culmination. Parents would disguise their children as these frightening spirits so they would blend in and be left unharmed. To receive fruits, nuts, or coins from the community, guisers had to sing a song, recite a poem, or tell a joke. With the mass migration to America of Irish and Scottish immigrants, came the guising, but the old world rules of having to perform began to erode. The young migrants turned more to mischief and practical jokes. By the 1920s, Halloween in America was becoming a societal problem. Young people were tipping over outhouses, blocking roads, and assaulting people. Setting fire to real estate, trains, and even a 500 gallon tank of gasoline at one point. Guns were being casually fired and people were getting killed. Halloween became known across America as a night of terror. The solution was a simple bribe; If we give you food and sweets, will you promise not to destroy our property? The phrase “Trick or Treat,” was born as a playful extortion ultimatum used by kids: “Give us a treat, or pay the price.” This practice worked but was halted during World War II due to sugar rationing. After the war ended and the Baby Boom began, Halloween was groomed into a massive commercial holiday. Beginning as early as the 1930s in Detroit Michigan, the night before Halloween, October 30th, was called “Mischief Night” or “Devil’s Night.” It started off with standard pranks like soaping windows, but by the 1970s, it had turned into a very dark tradition of arson. Every year, vandals would set fire to abandoned buildings, dumpsters, and cars. The destruction peaked in 1984 with over 800 fires lit across a three-night span that dyed the sky orange. The city fought back with curfews and small patrols throughout the late 80s, and in 1995, the city mobilized between forty and fifty thousand neighborhood volunteers to patrol the streets on October 30th looking for arsonists, and the night was re-branded as “Angels’ Night.” During the 1970s, a student-led costume street party near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus grew into a monster known as the “State Street Halloween Party”. By the early 2000s, it was attracting over a hundred-thousand revelers, many of whom came from out of state with the express intent to cause chaos and destroy property. Every year storefront windows would get shattered, street signs torn down, and bike racks uprooted. By 2005, the rioters were actively taunting law enforcement