I loved trick or treating as a kid. Going around the neighborhood in my costume! Getting scared by decorations! The candy! It was the best part of the season (outside of back to school shopping, but that may have been a more personal favorite) When I got older, and started working as a scare actor for the season, I joined my dad in the yard, scaring kids as they make their way through my family’s graveyard. We really like Halloween in my house. Then Covid-19 hit, and it was like a switch was flipped in society. October 31st. 2023. The Pandemic is no longer a global health emergency. I get my scarecrow makeup on. I glue spark-making bars to my boots. I’m ready. The kids aren’t though! We ended that night with so much leftover candy, I didn’t even need to go to the store for the discounted crunch bars the next day. So what happened? Where did the Marnie Pipers and Max Dennisons go, and why were they all replaced by the boring parents from those movies?
The plague (and the death of all holiday spirit)
When the world shut down for Covid 19, holidays were halted as well. Thanksgiving smiles were hidden by masks and visits to Santa at the mall were put on hold. Perhaps worst of all, trick or treating got paused. In my neighborhood, we were required to go contactless for candy and keep the 6 feet distance. I suppose it made sense for the safety of everyone involved but there were lasting effects. The thing about traditions is that they are generally a yearly thing and when for two years, every tradition is put on hold, it changes things. The annual event just sort of started dying off.
Trunk r’ Treating
Communities all over have been doing trunk or treats for a while but they increased in number in recent years. As a safer alternative to trick or treating, it makes sense for the most protective parents. However, it’s boring! Even more so it takes the life out of Halloween. Instead of children running around the neighborhood on a hunt for full size candy bars, it’s a parking lot, children being paraded from car to car with a strict order of events. And nothing too scary! We can’t have little Susie and Johnny getting startled by something jumping out or music that’s just a little too eerie. Only minions and despicable me at the trunk or treats. Maybe it’s a safety thing, but maybe it also dilutes Halloween entirely.
I’m not arguing for kids to be unsafe! I’m really not. The little ones should definitely still be having an eye kept on them by mom. However, it seems like children today aren’t not being given the ability to learn safety because they’re not being given the opportunity to be unsafe. You teach your kids to look both ways before they cross the road, and you teach them to be careful who they talk to, but then every time they cross the street, you’re there holding their hand. Kids need to have some level of freedom, not necessarily do I mean releasing the five year olds onto the streets October 31st of every year, but let them walk up to the doors of your neighbors. Stand a few feet behind them. Stop containing fun to a parking lot from the hours of noon to 3 pm.
13 going on 30
I think the other main contributor to the death of trick or treating is on the decline is children simply growing up too quickly. Perhaps it’s the internet, causing children to be exposed to things much earlier than is developmentally appropriate. Maybe it’s rampant consumerism pushing things like intense skin care routines on little girls. Children are behaving far older than they are, refusing “childish” traditions long before the usual age. Many of my friends went trick or treating as long as they could. We clung to a childhood that the kids today are desperate to leave behind. The things that kids know, say, and do today are exemplary of a child growing up too fast. They’re desperate to leave trick or treating behind, along with all the other traces of them ever being a kid.
The case
Trick or treating is a sacred tradition, in my opinion. It’s one of the few nights of the year that children are able to be let loose on the neighborhood. Little to no authority figures in a semi controlled environment. You teach your kids the rules of the world so that they can follow them on their own. If you hold the hands of kids throughout their entire childhood, they get thrown into the world with no experience in the environments familiar to them. Am I advocating we return entirely to Cyndi Lauper on the TVs every 10 o clock to make sure parents care for the kids? No! Not at all! But I am advocating for parents to put some slack on the line every once in a while. Let kids get hurt. Make sure they know to come back by the time the street lights come on and which of the main roads they aren’t allowed to cross. That way when they are an adult, they know how to handle themselves. They know how to exist in the world. And this knowing can easily begin with something as simple as running around the neighborhood on the hunt for full size candy bars.