Trick-or-Treating Is Legal Extortion

Every Halloween, millions of kids dress up as monsters, knock on strangers' doors and demand candy. And we just pay up. Why? The first time anyone wrote down the words "trick or treat", in a Canadian newspaper in 1927, it called the kids at the door robbers. And the grown-ups? They paid. Trick-or-treating is the latest round of a deal that's 2,000 years old: pay whoever turns up at your door, and they'll leave you alone. It started with food left out for the dead at the Celtic bonfires of Samhain. Then came beggars singing for soul cakes, kids in masks carrying carved turnips, and a 1930s prank war so bad that towns almost cancelled Halloween. Then the grown-ups found a solution... and it still works. Chapters: 0:00 The strange deal 0:51 The night the dead came home 2:29 Begging for the dead 3:51 Masks, songs and mischief 5:15 The turnip with a face 6:56 The prank war 8:08 The solution 9:31 The candy machine 11:03 So why do we give kids candy? Simple questions, surprisingly long answers. Subscribe for the next one. #Halloween #History #SuspiciouslyEducational