Halloween is not a night of pranks.
At Halloween now, children and teenagers will dress up as ghosts and ask for candy along the street at night, knocking on doors and singing "Trick or treat, trick or treat me with delicious food" (translated into Chinese), so that the host will open the door and take out the candy and distribute it to the children, and the children who get the candy will leave happily. In fact, if there is no candy, they will not be said to be mischievous. This is just a form.
In fact, Halloween is meant to celebrate and praise autumn.
This so-called night of pranks was transformed from a cake of souls. In the Middle Ages, Halloween had a popular activity-making "cakes of souls". The "soul cake" is actually a kind of bread dessert covered with raisins. According to the so-called custom of "comforting the spirit", children have to go door to door to ask for this kind of cake, which is very similar to the modern trick-or-treating activity. Every time the children get a piece of this cake, they have to pray for the deceased relatives and friends of the cake delivery person. These prayers will help their relatives and friends find their way from purgatory to heaven. Children will also sing a song of the bread of the soul, which is similar to the modern "trick or treat, trick or treat, treat me with delicious food". In this way, the cake of the soul slowly became the present candy.
The above statement is the most reliable, because it takes time to make desserts, and it is simply unrealistic to make desserts if there are too many children coming, so the host has no choice but to find some desserts instead of "cakes of the soul". Then the children's favorite thing is candy, and the children who come to beg for it will be more happy. So, it will be passed from family to family, and gradually everyone will not make cakes, but use candy that children prefer.
On the 31th of October, the children are the happiest, just like the children on the first day of China, and they can get all kinds of snacks, except that the children in western countries get only sweets such as candy and chocolate on this day, and the children often go out in groups, and a group of children go to beg for candy together, which has a higher success rate. Many children carry bags that are full soon, and they have to go home and empty them before coming out. I have to say that the candy consumption on this day is very high.
In the United States and other western countries, the sales of Halloween candy far exceed those of Valentine's Day, Christmas and Easter. Basically, every household has to purchase a lot of candy to meet the needs of Halloween. Besides candy, there is another thing that consumes a lot, namely pumpkin. It is also one of the traditional customs to make pumpkin lanterns on Halloween. Children have to carry a pumpkin lantern in their hands when begging for candy, and they also need to use pumpkin lanterns for home decoration, which is also very expensive.
The jack-o-lantern originated in ancient Ireland. Legend has it that a man named Jack is a drunk and loves practical jokes. On Halloween, he trapped the devil in a tree, and he refused to let the devil come down until the devil promised never to let him live in hell. After Jack's death, because he didn't believe in God, he couldn't go to heaven, and the devil wouldn't let him go to hell. In order to help Jack find his way back to earth, the devil gave him a burning charcoal. Jack put the burning charcoal in a lantern he carved with a big carrot, the first "Jack's lantern", to help him find his way back to Ireland, but he never found it, so he wandered the world with a lantern forever.