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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