We live on THE street in my small town that everyone flocks to (all old houses, sidewalks, perfect for Halloween.) My husband bought $50 worth of candy this year and we went through most of it in the designated two hours of trick-or-treating. I INSIST that all the kids (from the littles to the teens ) say “Trick-orTreat!” before I hand out anything, lol. I’m quite dictatorial about it but I do it with a smile, and try to compliment the costumes.
I enjoy carving different pumpkin faces each year…my fav pumpkin this year was a retro cat face with whiskers. I have a bunch of different, specialty pumpkins that I don’t carve…but leave on my steps til December ( To me, fall lasts until after Thanksgiving and don’t get into Christmas until autumn gets its due.) Completing the décor each year is a 4’ tall plastic light-up deer that my husband found thrown to the curb twenty years ago when we were still dating and he was walking from his place to mine one evening. He lives in the attic (the deer, not my husband!) but gets to return to the world to make an appearance in the yard each Halloween. A little odd but …what’s Halloween for? You’ve gotta admit, a glowing deer IS a tad spooky, and we get a lot of compliments.
I wish you would rethink this. I posted upthread about a parent of a non-verbal special needs child and how this was upsetting. Other kids are just very shy.
@abasket I would just give it a 5. 2 hours is too much for me, 1 would be better…so I was happy to end at 1.5. I think just of the thought of getting up and down, up and down is worse than actually doing it.
Trick or Treat night seems like such a great example of community unity. Kids loving it and parents getting excited because the night evokes many good memories for them of that magical fun night.
We would participate if anyone came to our door. Everyone in the neighborhood has aged out. Now we have to consume several bags of candy ourselves (sad, I know).
Our first year as a married couple, we were living in a small apartment building in Cambridge, MA. You had to have a key to unlock the front door of the building as well as an apartment key. I think there were only 6 apartments in the building. So we weren’t expecting anyone. But kids showed up, somehow. Perhaps the apartment manager unlocked the front door.
In any event, after handing out granola bars, we were down to . . . basically nothing, unless I had decided to give out Campbell’s soup cans. So my spouse went off to the grocery store in search of candy, while I tried to pretend not to be home. Someone came to the door and said, “Trick or Treat!” I didn’t answer. They said, “We know you’re in there.” I still didn’t answer. They said, “This means trick!” Once again, no answer. Fortunately, they didn’t actually pull a trick as far as I noticed.
But since then, we have always had candy! Lots! When we lived in an area with younger children, we got quite a few Trick or Treaters, and I always enjoyed seeing their costumes. There was a home-made Ewok that was exceptionally good, but a lot of them were fun.
Today I took my leftover candy to the hospital where they are having a candy drive for the troops. A neighbor said that the ymca was also accepting donations of your leftover Halloween candy.
So the candy is gone from my house and it’s being sent to deployed troops. I thought that it was a treat for the troops and it probably is. But my neighbor has a son in the army and she says that the troops give out candy to the kids when they are on patrol.
Win and win. I’m happy now that I bought all that candy. O:-)
We decorate every year and some years we only get 30-50 kids. This year was a very busy one cuz we got 98 kids ! Also some of the most clever costumes. Very cute family was dressed as a hotdog, Ketchup, Mustard and Pickles and another group dressed as Alice in Wonderland, Cheshire Cat and the Boy Twins. We ran out of candy by 7:45 pm.
