we called two experts from our friends at the conversation to lift the mask off this terrifying tale kalpana is a longtime investigative journalist and a scholar of ethics and religion scott is a historian and author who is living his childhood dream of researching myths and monsters of all varieties let's start with an obvious question how did a country as obsessed with stranger danger as the us wind up sending their kids out once a year on mass in the dark to collect candy from strangers the history of halloween is hazy at best but it's basically a frankensteinian monster composed of bits and pieces from many cultures the core is celtic the celts had a feast called samhain which marked the end of summer it was a celebration of harvest but it was also a time to remember the dead contemplate about death other cultures contributed various limbs the rough predecessor of the halloween we know today came alive by the NUMBER_TOKENth century waves of irish and scottish immigrants brought this cultural hodgepodge to the u.s in the NUMBER_TOKENth century quick side note the origins of trick or treat are unknown but it does provide a useful way to understand the development of contemporary halloween at first the focus was on the trick part in the late NUMBER_TOKENth and early NUMBER_TOKENth centuries adolescents pulled truly classic pranks like setting random fires slashing car tires tipping over outhouses and somehow getting livestock on top of barns in kentucky in NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN boys tied a stuffed human to some train tracks then howled with laughter when the panicked conductor stopped the locomotive just in time the large number of young men who often come from immigrant backgrounds they really did find in halloween a way to express uh what i think we have to call class conflict reprieve came with world war ii when the whole country scaled back festivities in favor of rationing to support the troops but after that halloween came roaring back and this time the treat part took center stage wartime sugar rationing ended and candy companies teamed up with the new admin of madison avenue to flood the streets with sweet treats the rising middle class now nestled in brand new suburbs unleashed hordes of their young kids the baby boomers to demand treats from their neighbors by the NUMBER_TOKENs particularly in kind of a white middle-class culture there was a feeling that halloween had become a normalized american holiday unfortunately this light-hearted fun didn't last very long by the time the oldest baby boomers reached their teens and twenties halloween had earned a far more sinister reputation if we did want to pick a patient zero moment for this particular panic it would be the october NUMBER_TOKENth NUMBER_TOKEN op-ed in the new york times about halloween it's not referring to any particular incidents the op-ed simply states that for example could horror rather than happiness be waiting for your child in their bag of halloween candy could what you think is sugar sprinkled on the cookies actually be poisonous lie could that apple contain a straight razor
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN we called two experts from our friends at the conversation to lift the mask off this terrifying tale END_SPONSOR_TOKEN