Millions of U.S. children set to 'trick or treat'

(CNN) -- Millions of young ghosts, goblins and gremlins are eagerly preparing to ring door bells across the United States Tuesday night and exclaim the familiar Halloween cry: "Trick or treat!"

In much of the country, trick-or-treaters -- with parents following closely -- should have good weather. Cities like Miami, St. Louis, Missouri, and even Minneapolis are expecting mild temperatures and no rain.

But the weather could pose a challenge elsewhere. For example, children in Boston, Massachusetts, and Salt Lake City, Utah, may have to cover their costumes with raincoats.

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When the children head out for the night, they will symbolically be doing more than filling their bags full of candy. They'll be keeping alive a holiday that originated in pre-Christian days as a pagan festival of the dead, according to the book "Folkore of American Holidays," edited by Hennig Cohen and Tristram Potter Coffin.

The pagan festival was adapted by the Catholic Church during the seventh century, when Pope Boniface IV made it a celebration of known and unknown saints and martyrs. The Catholic celebration became known as All Saints' or All Hallows' Day, and according to pagan custom it begins as the sun sets the night before.

All Saints' Day originally was celebrated on May 13, but Pope Gregory III shifted the date to November 1 during the eighth century.

In the tenth century, All Souls Day emerged to follow All Saints' Day on November 2. All Souls' Day, on which the living prayed to help the souls of the dead, was also a Christian adapation of pagan festivals. The Church of England later abolished All Souls Day, although many Protestants continued to observe it informally. In modern secular tradition, observance of the two days has been combined.

In the United States, traditional observances of the two days were marked by customs such as the wearing of masks, pranks, decoration of graves and a belief in the return of ghosts or dead souls.

But the "trick or treat" custom is apparently a recent development, according to Cohen and Coffin, who cited one sociologist's comment that the custom is not traditional but rather a "rehearsal for consumership."

However, trick-or-treating may be related to earlier customs from the British isles, the authors wrote. One of these was Plough Day in England, on which farm workers begged for gifts at homes and threatened to damage the grounds with their plows if they did not get anything.

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