Before the Fun Size Bar: A Brief History of Halloween Sweets
Here is something to think about while you stand in the candy aisle this week: for most of its history, Halloween had almost nothing to do with candy. The bag of fun size bars by the front door is a pretty recent invention. Before that, it was a baker's holiday.
It started with a cake
Go back to medieval England. The church set aside November 2 as All Souls' Day, a day to pray for the dead. Poor families went door to door offering prayers for a household's departed, and in return they got a soul cake: a small, spiced cake, often marked with a cross. The practice was called souling, and over time children took it over, asking for food, money or ale. In Scotland and Ireland, kids did something similar called guising. They dressed up, went house to house, and performed a song or a poem to earn their treat. No performance, no treat. So the first Halloween treat was not a candy bar. It was something somebody baked.
Michigan got there first
Fast forward to North America. Irish and Scottish immigrant families brought these customs with them in the early 1900s. The phrase "trick or treat" started showing up in Canadian newspapers in the early 1920s. And the earliest known use of the phrase in an American newspaper? November 1928, in the Bay City Times, right here in Michigan. The paper described a child delivering the "fatal ultimatum" of "Tricks or treats!" We'll take the bragging rights.
Popcorn balls, apples and a cookie if you were lucky
When trick or treating took hold in the 1930s, what landed in the bag was a grab bag: nuts, a few coins, a small toy, an apple, a cookie, a popcorn ball. Candy showed up sometimes, a few jelly beans or a licorice stick, but it was not the main event. Candy historian Samira Kawash points out that the candy industry's own trade talk in the 1920s and 1930s barely mentioned Halloween at all. Then World War II and sugar rationing put the whole thing on pause.
The great switch to store bought
After the war, the suburbs grew, the sugar came back, and trick or treating exploded. Through the 1950s, people started buying treats instead of making them, and candy was the easiest thing to buy. By the 1960s, candy companies were advertising hard for Halloween and shrinking their bars into the bite sizes we know now, sold in big bags made for handing out. Homemade treats were still normal, though. A popcorn ball from the neighbor down the street was still a perfectly good haul.
The scare that killed the popcorn ball
Here is where it turns. Starting in the 1960s and building through the 1970s, stories spread about poisoned candy and razor blades hidden in apples. Kawash and other historians who have dug into those stories found that almost all of them were myths. It didn't matter. Parents got scared, and the rule became: throw out anything homemade or unwrapped. That one shift did more for the big candy brands than any ad campaign. Sealed, branded candy became the only "safe" treat, and the homemade popcorn ball and the neighbor's cookies quietly disappeared from Halloween.
A few classics, and where they came from
Candy corn came along in the 1880s as a "mellowcreme" penny candy, sold year round and made in all kinds of farm shapes. Its harvest look is what tied it to fall and eventually to Halloween. You either love it or you are correct.
The red candy apple is credited to William W. Kolb, a Newark, New Jersey candy maker, in 1908.
Caramel apples and mixed nuts were part of the harvest season treats at early American Halloween parties, long before anybody thought of a fun size bar.
So where does that leave a bakery?
Right back where Halloween started, honestly. The very first Halloween treat was a cake somebody baked for a neighbor, and we think that's a tradition worth keeping. We're open Saturday, Halloween, from 9 to 4. Come in costume if you want. We won't make you sing for it.
One more thing. Halloween is also Chef Keegan’s birthday, so to celebrate both, everybody who comes in Saturday gets a free chocolate chip cookie, in costume or not. A baker handing a treat to a neighbor on Halloween. Feels about right.
Chef Keegan and The Lakehouse Bakery Team
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