万圣节为何说“不给糖就捣蛋”?

译/刘清清 审订/沛轩

Each Halloween, hordes of costumed kids trudge1trudge费力地走，跋涉。from door to door exclaiming the same phrase at each stop:“Trick or treat!” It’s really a treat-only affair, since adults always shell out2shell out分发（给孩子们的万圣节礼物）。candy and children rarely have tricks up their sleeves3have sth up one’s sleeve暗中留有一招；藏有锦囊妙计。(except perhaps for those dressed as magicians).In other words,they may as well save half a breath and simply shout “Treat!” So, where did the term come from?

Halloween hijinks4hijinks = high jinks狂欢作乐，嬉闹。

每到万圣节，成群结队的孩子们穿着节日服装，挨家挨户地敲门，每到一家他们都喊着同一句话:“不给糖就捣蛋!”。其实只是给糖的事，因为大人总是会买好糖果，而孩子们则很少偷偷准备要捣蛋（那些装扮成魔术师的小孩或许除外）。换句话说，孩子们还不如省口气，直接喊一声“给糖!”那么，“不给糖就捣蛋!”这个说法是怎么来的呢?

2Halloween wasn’t always about cosplay and chocolate bars.During the 19th century, Irish and Scottish children celebrated the holiday by wreaking (mostly harmless) havoc on their neighbors—jamming hot cabbage into a keyhole to stink up someone’s house,frightening passersby with turnips carved to look ghoulish5ghoulish可怕的。, etc.

万圣节狂欢

2在过去，万圣节的活动并不总是装扮角色和讨要巧克力棒。19世纪，为了庆祝万圣节，爱尔兰和苏格兰的孩子们会对邻居们使坏（大多无实质性伤害），比如把热乎乎的卷心菜塞进钥匙孔里让房子发臭，用芜菁雕刻成的鬼脸吓唬路人，等等。

3Kids didn’t give up that annual mischief when they immigrated to the U.S.,and Americans happily co-opted6co-opt借鉴，借用（别人的观点）。the tradition.Toppled outhouses7outhouse户外厕所。and trampled vegetable gardens soon gave way to more violent hijinks—like the time a Kansas woman almost died in a car crash after kids rubbed candle wax on streetcar tracks, for example—and these pranks escalated during the Great Depression.

4In short, tricks were a huge part of Halloween throughout the early 20th century.So, too, were treats.For All Souls’ Day in the Middle Ages, people went door-to-door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for food or money, a tradition known as souling.A similar custom from 19th-century Scotland, called guising8guising化妆游戏（把自己装扮成一个神话人物或可怕的形象，或是万圣节故事中的人物，到人们家里要糖果或钱）。, entailed9entail使必要；牵涉。exchanging jokes or songs for goodies.While it’s not proven that modern treatbegging is directly derived from either souling or guising, the practice of visiting your neighbors for an edible handout10handout施舍物。around Halloween has existed in some form or another for centuries.

3苏格兰和爱尔兰人移民到美国后，他们的后代没有丢掉每年一次搞恶作剧的传统，而美国人也欣然借鉴了这一传统。最初是弄倒屋外厕所和踩踏菜园子，很快升级为更激烈的狂欢。例如，在堪萨斯州，孩子们在有轨电车的轨道上抹蜡，酿成车祸，差点导致一位当地妇女丧命。而在大萧条期间，这些恶作剧更是变本加厉。

Canada coins a catchphrase

4简而言之，在20世纪早期，捣蛋和款待都是万圣节的重要组成部分。中世纪时期，人们会在万灵节这一天挨家挨户为逝者祷告以换取食物或钱，这便是“索灵”风俗的由来。19世纪的苏格兰也有类似的习俗，称之为“化妆游戏”，即人们通过讲笑话或唱歌来换取美食。虽然目前没有证据表明现代的“讨糖”行为直接源自“索灵”或“化妆游戏”，但在万圣节拜访邻居、讨要吃食的做法已经以各种形式存在了好几个世纪。

5With tricks and treats on everyone’s minds come October11come October =when October comes这是一种特殊形式的倒装结构，将come的原形形式置于日期、时间之前，意思是“（提及的时间）到来”。, it was only a matter of time before someone combined them into a single catchphrase.Based on the earliest known written references to “trick or treat”, this may have happened in Canada during the 1920s.As Merriam-Webster reports,a Saskatchewan newspaper first mentioned the words together in an article from 1923.“Hallowe’en passed off very quietly here,” it read.“‘Treats’ not‘tricks’ were the order of the evening.”By 1927, young trick-or-treaters had adopted the phrase themselves.

加拿大创造的流行语

5十月来了，每个人心里都想着tricks（捣蛋）与treats（款待），人们将二者组合成一句顺口溜只是时间问题。根据已知关于“不给糖就捣蛋”的最早书面记载，该词可能出现在20世纪20年代的加拿大。据《梅里亚姆-韦伯斯特词典》，加拿大萨斯喀彻温省的一家报纸在1923年的一篇文章中首次将这两个词相提并论，“非常平静地度过了万圣节”“今晚的主题是‘款待’不是‘捣蛋’”。1927年之前，小捣蛋鬼们便用上了“不给糖就捣蛋”这个短语。

6“Halloween provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun,” Alberta’s Lethbridge Herald reported in 1927.“No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels,etc., much of which decorated the front street.The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word ‘trick or treat,’ to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.”

6“万圣节提供了一个让人们狠狠玩一把的机会。”阿尔伯塔省《莱斯布里奇先驱报》1927年的报道称：“没有造成实际的损失，除了一些人被搞得气急败坏，不得不到处找马车轮子、大门、马车、桶等，这些大多用来装饰正门所临的街道了。小捣蛋鬼们敲开邻居家的前后门，嚷嚷着‘不给糖就捣蛋’，屋里的人高高兴兴地交出吃的，小强盗们就这样被打发了，一个个兴高采烈地。”

7The phrase appeared in Michigan’s Bay City Times the following year, describing how children uttered“the fatal ultimatum ‘Tricks or treats!’”to blackmail their neighbors into handing out sweets.

Donald Duck’s endorsement

8Sugar rationing brought trick-ortreating to a temporary halt during

7等到下一年，该短语便出现在了美国密歇根州《湾城时报》上，该报描述了孩子们如何说出“致命通牒‘不给糖就捣蛋’”，威胁邻居们分发糖果。World War II, but the tradition (and the phrase itself) had gained popularity once again by the early 1950s—with some help from candy companies and a few beloved pop culture characters.Charles Schulz depicted the Peanuts12《花生漫画》简称《花生》，是一部长篇连载的美国漫画。漫画的主人公为查理·布朗（Charlie Brown），以及饲养的米格鲁猎兔犬史努比（Snoopy）。漫画还有乒乓（Pig-Pen）、施洛德（Schroeder）、露西·范佩尔特（Lucy Van Pelt）、莱纳斯·范佩尔特（Linus Van Pelt）、莎莉·布朗（Sally Brown）等知名的个性角色，是世界漫画史上首部以多角色演绎故事的日常系漫画。gang cavorting13cavort嬉戏玩闹。around town in costume for a Halloween comic strip14comic strip（通常刊登在报纸上的）连环漫画。in 1951; and Huey, Dewey, and Louie15迪士尼公司“米老鼠”系列中的三胞胎小鸭子，是唐老鸭调皮的外甥、“少年军校”的成员。 三只小鸭分别叫作Huey Duck（辉儿，红色衣帽）、Dewey Duck（杜儿，蓝色衣帽）、Louie Duck（路儿，绿色衣帽）。got to go trick-or-treating in a 1952 Donald Duck cartoon titled Trick or Treat.

唐老鸭的支持

8二战期间，由于糖限量供应，“不给糖就捣蛋”的活动暂时停止。但到了20世纪50年代早期，在糖果公司和几位流行文化偶像的推动下，这一传统（以及这一短语本身）再次风靡起来。1951年，查尔斯·舒尔茨在《花生》的一组万圣节主题连环画中描绘了几个小伙伴穿着节日服装在镇上玩闹的场景；而辉儿、杜儿和路儿在1952年的唐老鸭卡通片《不给糖就捣蛋》中也玩起了“不给糖就捣蛋”的游戏。

9Fortunately, the treat part of the phrase has thoroughly overtaken the trick part.But if you stuff rank cabbage in your neighbor’s keyhole this Halloween, we won’t tell.■

9幸运的是，短语中的“款待”已经完全取代了“捣蛋”。但如果在今年万圣节你也想把发臭的卷心菜塞进邻居的钥匙孔，我们会保密的。 □