Community Corner

History of Candy Corn & Some Other Halloween Fun Facts

Plus, 2013 Romeoville Halloween headlines that are sure to scare you into a frenzy (or at least get you thinking about America's fascination with the last day in October).

To start your Halloween Week on a Spooktacular note, I decided to dig up some fun Halloween facts. No, I didn’t cross a black cat or spend an evening with a shovel in the cemetery. Rather, I let my fingers do the dirty work (on the internet) and I found these gems at RealSimple.com:

  • Treat-or-treating harks back to the Middle Ages and All Souls’ Day, when poor people in Britain would beg for soul cakes, a sweet-bread treat, and pray for dead relatives in return.
  • The candy-collecting tradition has spread from the United States to Canada, Australia and Western Europe, where more and more little goblins now trick-or-treat. In Ireland, rural neighborhoods light bonfires and children play snap apple, a game in which they try to take a bite from apples that are hung by strings from a tree or door frame.
  • Candy corn has been made with the same recipe by the Jelly Belly Candy Company since around 1900. What’s in that recipe? Sugar, corn syrup and marshmallow.

More Halloween Fun


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