Halloween Traditions and the Year Each One Was First Recorded

Halloween Traditions and the Year Each One Was First Recorded

Halloween traditions are the customs people repeat every 31 October: trick-or-treating, jack-o'-lanterns, apple games, bonfires, fortune-telling charms, costume parades and haunted attractions. Most are younger than they sound. "Tricks or treats" first reached print in 1917 and the civic costume parade in 1920, while begging at Hallowmas was already a stage joke by 1623.

The newest custom on the list is the personal digital greeting, and it keeps an old festival habit: it happens late. Nearly half of SubhSandesh's shared pages (48.3%) are viewed on phones, and for Raksha Bandhan 2026, our nearest measured festival, 49.4% of pages were created on the day, though that sample is only 89 pages and is not Halloween. Below: nine dated tradition cards, the customs that faded, and three new ones.

What makes a custom a Halloween tradition?

A Halloween tradition is a custom a community repeats each 31 October, the vigil of All Saints, and expects to see again the following year. It differs from a party idea because it has a written past as well as a living present.

Each date below is the oldest document we opened and read ourselves. The next two runs of every custom fall at weekends: Saturday 31 October 2026, then Sunday 31 October 2027.

9 Halloween traditions, each with its first dated record

Each card follows one pattern: first dated record and source, survival today, one overlooked detail.

1. Souling and soul cakes

• First dated record: in print by 1623, when The Two Gentlemen of Verona appeared in the First Folio with Speed's jibe about speaking "puling like a beggar at Hallowmas" (Folger Shakespeare text, Act 2, Scene 1).
• Where it survives: mostly in memory. Writing in 1912, the folklorist Charlotte Burne said Hallowmas soul-cakes had lingered in Shropshire "almost within living memory".
• Overlooked detail: Burne found the cake's place in northern England taken by Bonfire Night parkin, an oatmeal, butter and treacle cake.

2. Halloween fires

• First dated record: 1658, when the antiquary Sir William Dugdale noted that the master of a household "anciently" carried burning straw around his corn on All-hallow Even, as gathered in Charlotte Burne's December 1912 paper in Folk-Lore.
• Where it survives: bonfires still burn in parts of Ireland and Northern Ireland, while England's moved to 5 November, a custom Burne judged older than the 1605 plot.
• Overlooked detail: Thomas Pennant reported that early-18th-century North Wales households threw marked white stones into the ashes, and a stone missing by morning foretold its owner's death within the year.

3. Nut burning

• First dated record: about 1714, in John Gay's poem "The Spell" from The Shepherd's Week, where two hazel nuts are thrown into a fire, each given a sweetheart's name. It is a love charm, not yet tied to 31 October, though Lancashire Legends (1873) still reported it in use.
• Where it survives: largely faded. Robert Burns fixed it to Halloween in his 1786 poem, noting that nuts burning quietly together, or jumping apart, foretold the courtship.
• Overlooked detail: Schell's 1903 party book said Welsh families threw nuts into their fires to forecast prosperity, not romance.

4. Mirror divination

• First dated record: 1786, in Burns's own footnote, reprinted in an 1819 Falkirk chapbook: take a candle, go alone to a looking-glass, eat an apple in front of it, and the face of your future spouse appears over your shoulder.
• Where it survives: as a party dare. Stanley Schell's 1903 Hallowe'en Festivities moved it to the cellar stairs, with a girl walking down backward holding a mirror.
• Overlooked detail: Burns hedged even then, adding that "some traditions" also required combing your hair throughout.

5. Snap-apple and ducking for apples

• First dated record: 1833, when Daniel Maclise exhibited "Snap-apple Night, or All-Hallow Eve in Ireland", painted from a party given by the Rev. Matthew Horgan at Blarney, according to the 1893 Dictionary of National Biography.
• Where it survives: at parties in Ireland, Britain and North America; Burne noted in 1912 that bobbing had been a Welsh favourite "even recently".
• Overlooked detail: Schell's 1903 version tied the players' hands and carved an initial into each of a dozen apples, so the game doubled as a love forecast.

6. Jack-o'-lanterns

• First dated record in this card: 1903, when Schell told hosts to hang lit jack-o'-lanterns on the lawn and fence posts. Earlier newspaper mentions exist, but none we could open.
• Where it survives: wherever Halloween is kept; turnip lanterns are still carved in Scotland and Ireland.
• Overlooked detail: Schell's lanterns were made "from apples, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins", so a pumpkin was one choice among four.

7. Trick-or-treating

• First dated record: an Ontario paper, The Sault Daily Star, heard children's gangs shouting "tricks or treats" on Halloween 1917 and printed it the next day. The wording settled into "trick or treat" in 1927 Alberta reports about the village of Blackie (newspaper citations compiled by Barry Popik).
• Where it survives: the United States and Canada set the pattern others copied.
• Overlooked detail: in 1917 the treat was often a coin, and a house that paid was left alone until a different gang arrived.

8. Costume parades

• First dated record: 1920, when civic leaders in Anoka, Minnesota, organised a parade to steer young people away from pranks, and more than a thousand schoolchildren made costumes (Anoka Halloween timeline).
• Where it survives: Anoka has held it every year since 1920 except 1942 and 1943, the war years.
• Overlooked detail: the 1920 marchers got popcorn, candy and peanuts, then a bonfire at Bridge Square.

9. Haunted attractions

• First dated record: 1903, when Schell ranked the best rooms for Halloween "mysteries": a barn, then an attic full of shadows, then a cellar.
• Where it survives: as ticketed haunted houses and scare trails, heirs to a host's dark cellar.
• Overlooked detail: Schell wanted a door sign asking guests to "knock low and slow", a hall lit only by jack-o'-lanterns, and whoever answered the door dressed in black.

Halloween traditions compared: oldest record and where they survive

Grouped into four families, the nine cards look like this, with years counted from each family's oldest record to 2026.

The takeaway: the customs about luck in love are the ones that shrank to games, while the begging and spectacle customs grew.

Halloween customs that faded, and three that are new

Some customs were banned, others stopped being useful. These four are documented and now rare:

• All-night Hallowmas bells: church bells rung through the eves of All Saints and All Souls, forbidden as "superstitious" by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
• Tindles: small furze fires lit by children at Findern, Derbyshire, on 2 November, as reported in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1784.
• Melting lead: pouring molten lead through a wedding ring or key into water, then reading the shapes, as Schell described in 1903.
• Four bowls: clear water, wine, vinegar and an empty bowl; a blindfolded guest spun three times and touched one to learn whether life would be happy, rich, poor or unmarried.

Three newer customs have joined the calendar, one line each:

• Trunk-or-treat: decorated car boots in a church or school car park, so children collect treats in one place.
• Teal pumpkins: a pumpkin painted teal tells allergic children that toys or stickers are on offer, a US campaign since 2014.
• Digital greetings: one private link, made for one person and opened that night.

Why a first record is not an origin

A first record dates when a custom was written down, not when it began. Begging rounds by the poor were rarely recorded, so souling is surely older than 1623; read every date here as "by this year at the latest".

The reverse error is more common. Schell's 1903 manual already traced apple games to a Roman feast of Pomona, yet we found no ancient text describing it, so the claim is an unsourced guess at least 123 years old. Burne made a bolder comparison in 1912, setting Halloween's fires beside the North Indian Diwali, when houses are cleaned and lit to welcome returning souls.

Keeping one tradition with one person

Most customs above began as something done for one household or one sweetheart. Of every 100 pages started on SubhSandesh, about 91 (90.9%) get finished and sent, and 38.5% of makers add a password before sending, so a page behaves like a private gesture, not a broadcast.

For a quick, playful version, the haunted-house Halloween card with a pumpkin to carve is built in about five minutes: six photos at most, your letter, and a carved lantern whose candle lights up the word you choose. For more ceremony, the premium Halloween page with your own voice message needs about ten minutes and allows a recording of 60 seconds or less, twelve photos, a countdown lock until a chosen time and a single written reply. For any other occasion, browse the full set of SubhSandesh templates.

When to keep the tradition offline

Neither Halloween page can host a party or replace a custom that needs people in a room. Both are made for one recipient, and both run in English only.

• Same house: fill a tub with 12 apples and carve initials into them instead.
• Young children: the walk round the block with a bag matters more than any screen.
• All Souls' grief: for a family remembering someone on 2 November, a lit candle or a visit says more than a joke about boos.

Sources

• Folger Shakespeare Library, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.1 (First Folio, 1623).
• Charlotte S. Burne, "Guy Fawkes' Day", Folk-Lore, vol. 23, no. 4, December 1912 (Wikisource transcription).
• Stanley Schell (ed.), Hallowe'en Festivities, 1903 (Wikisource transcription).
• Barry Popik, "Trick or treat", The Big Apple (newspaper citations from 1917).
• Anoka Halloween, history timeline (undated).