Thursday, November 1, 2018

"When Ghosts and Goblins by the score, Ring the bell on your front door, you'd better not be stingy or Your nightmares will come true."*


Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and the day after Halloween is always a come down, much like the sugar crash you have after binging on your horde of assorted chocolate bars, gummies, and lollipops. (Growing up, we had a “post-collection” tradition of dumping out all of the candy on the kitchen table, sorting through our loot, and then trading each other for our favorites. Brother B always ended up getting more than he gave; he was a shrewd negotiator.)

I was sorry to hear this Halloween season that there is a movement out there trying to get Halloween changed from October 31 to the Saturday before October 31. My response to that is: WEAK! Now, the costumes are fun, but the things that really make Halloween great are 1. candy and 2. spooky, and part of the spooky includes running around your neighborhood after dark on a school night when you normally would be at home.

Kids are already “trick or treating” in highly adult supervised environments from the trunks of cars in church or school parking lots; where is the challenge in that? Part of the fun of Halloween for me was the risk. You’d go up to someone’s door (you may know them, know them slightly,  or you may not know them at all depending on how far you traveled while still technically being in “your neighborhood”), ring the bell, and then wait and see. They may open the door; they may not. And you had no idea what they were going to give you for candy. But you’d better yell that “TRICK OR TREAT” as loud as you could to earn that Snickers bar or Reese’s pieces. My dad tells stories from growing up that trick or treating meant going INTO neighbors’ houses and having them admire your costume and “won’t you have a homemade cookie?” before getting their candy and moving on to the next house where the same thing happened all over again. With trunk or treats, everyone who shows up gets a candy whether they even say “trick or treat” or not. AND whether they say “thank you” or not, which is a massive pet peeve of mine. [And don’t get me started on the older middle school/freshmen in high school teens who think that some black on their faces and a hooded sweatshirt counts as a costume because IT DOESN’T. (You don’t have to have a homemade costume, but at least make an effort.)]

This year I went trick or treating with Sister K's family; her two boys were the Hulk and Superman. While we were out, she had left a bowl of candy on her front steps, and we returned to find it virtually untouched. No one else came after we got back relative early (7:15ish). This morning at work several people were talking about how they didn’t get any trick or treaters at all last night, despite the relatively warm temperatures (mid-60s). I wondered aloud if maybe parents were just ready to be done with neighborhood trick or treating after all the activities at schools, the trunk or treats, safe space trick or treating, and Halloween parties and other events put on by communities in an attempt to make Halloween safe for kids. Which seems really controlling and disappointing to me when I compare it to all the fun and freedom I had on Halloween growing up in the 70s and 80s. I don’t have kids so I don’t know firsthand about the fear and concern that parents have sending their kids off to trick or treat by themselves in the neighborhood, but I do think that a there has got to be a corollary with how well we know and trust our neighbors. (An aside: Sister K and her husband know ALL of their neighbors, and their neighbors know their kids. Sister B knows a couple of her neighbors, but they have LOADS of kids in that neighborhood and kids are so good at bringing people together. I have met all but one of my neighbors.)


Last night, one of Sister K’s neighbors related the following anecdote. A friend of hers who lives in Dallas can expect as many as 4,000 trick or treaters on Halloween night; they load up the whole dining room table with candy to prepare. The kids come in on buses. That is the complete opposite of what happened here last night. Can’t we meet somewhere in the middle? Maybe this is just nostalgia, but wouldn’t it be nice if Halloween could go back to the way I remember it: herds of neighborhood kids, prowling for candy, sharing with each other which houses had the good stuff (our parents always had full size chocolate bars), and then heading home: cold, sugar coated, and happy.


*Walt Disney's Trick or Treat

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