While Halloween is best known today as an occasion for playing pranks and getting candy, its origins have nothing to do with trick or treat.

All Hallows' Eve, as it is also called, coincides with the new year in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times, when residents set huge fires to ward off evil spirits. The concept of ghosts and goblins comes from the belief that on this day, the souls of the dead would revisit their former homes.

As Halloween became more secular, observances included playing pranks on one another, and later, going from house to house for trick or treat.