Halloween Grinch

[mrissa]

I have plaintive request and a few grinches for people who are celebrating this holiday with trick-or-treating-age people. (Note: those who are celebrating a religious holiday around this time, Samhain or Dia de los Muertos or any others, I assume trick-or-treating is not your only concern, and this is not addressed to you.)

First the plaintive request: if your kids are trick-or-treating, please consider taking them to the houses immediately around you in addition to wherever else they're going. I know sometimes they're going with someone in a different neighborhood or a different part of the neighborhood or whatever, and that's fine. It's just that there are so few holidays that explicitly involve the neighbors that I hate to see one fade out of use as such.

Okay, the grinching: people. With a small handful of exceptions, your child is almost certainly able-bodied enough to trick-or-treat without a car. If you are driving to get to a neighborhood that's better set up for trick-or-treating than your own, please park the car at a park or on the street somewhere or in some other nearby parking area and walk from house to house. This sounds really basic, but I have seen parents driving from driveway to driveway, picking their kids up after each house and driving them to the next house a few yards down the road. This is not okay. You are sending the kids off after lots and lots of sugar--you want them to wear themselves out. And really, if you save a little time and get to more houses this way, where's the benefit? Why get to more houses when you're doing a perfunctory job of the whole thing?

Also, if it is not icy and slippery out, go to every house with its front porch lights on! Don't skip one just because it has a lot of stairs! No, I'm not just saying that because my house has a lot of stairs. I'm saying that because, "Eh, I don't feel like climbing all those stairs," is for people who have an actual physical disability, not for sturdy, healthy children.

I am also a person who firmly believes in taking turns opening presents at Christmas. Even the smallest kids can learn about taking turns--albeit with judicious allocation of turns if you have a large crowd--and if the point was having stuff, you could just go buy yourself a bunch of stuff you like and leave your friends and relations out of it. (If your friends and relations are horrible, odious people, I actually recommend this course of action. But if not, spending the time is its own gift.) If trick-or-treating was only about candy, you could go buy a couple bags of your family's favorite kinds of candy and call it good and not have a couple of Mounds bars hanging around the house until after Thanksgiving, when someone who likes coconut finally comes over for a visit. It's not only about candy. It's the whole experience of going house to house in the dark, scuffing your shoes in the dry leaves or slurping through the wet leaves or trying not to fall in the ice and snow; it's the year that you were finally old enough to have your own way about not wearing your parka and you found out what your mom was on about all those years; it's the way your legs get really tired and you decide that maybe filling the whole entire pumpkin is not completely necessary. It's finding out that someone accidentally left their porch light on but isn't actually home, and you have to trudge back down the walk with no candy. That's how it goes; that's part of the thing. It's about knowing which of your neighbors is the really awesome guy who gives out full-size candy bars and which of your neighbors gives out raisins. If you teach your kids that Halloween is about more, they won't notice all the ways in which it--like the rest of life--can be about better instead. And that's a hell of a thing for them to have to unlearn in their adult lives when you can just do real trick-or-treating with them now.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

That's not grinchy, that's the voice of truth and beauty. Preach it.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

>>And really, if you save a little time and get to more houses this way, where's the benefit?<<

In all the neighborhoods I've lived in, except for one way out in the semi-wilderness along the James River, this wouldn't have saved time--in fact it probably would've taken longer. (Maybe the parents figured the kids would then get less candy...but still seems awfully lazy to me. This sounds like the genesis of those students who got tickets here on campus from the Ticket Nazi because they drove to class from dorms a couple hundred feet away.)

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. Awesome things to think about.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

If you get stuck with another Mounds bar, I'll eat it. It's my favorite candy bar.

I _hate_ parents driving 5 mph along the street and watching their children trudge door to door, sticking their heads out the window and yelling things. They should be out there with the kids, where they can actually enforce whatever authority it is that they think they need to enforce. A walk wouldn't hurt them, either.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

Hear here! Excellent posting, and I wish more folks would read and follow it.

'course, I also wish more folks, some folks, someone would come to my house. Halloween in a rural area isn't quiite the same.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

A walk wouldn't hurt them, either.

my rheumatologist, orthopedic surgeon, and physical therapist would like to disagree with you on that.

i've been trying to figure out what i'm going to do once my kid is old enough to trick or treat-- my two best thoughts so far are find a partner between now and then or send them out with their aunt and uncle.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Wow. I've never witnessed behavior like that. It's still pretty old-fashioned around here. If they come from out of the neighborhood, they park their car and walk.

But of course, I still gape at people driving their children to school when the school in question is a couple blocks away.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I will remember this when we have a small one to trick-or-treat with. Of course, it's possible that I will get a kiddo who loves coconut. My mom got one that hates Oreos and pineapple (even separately), so it could happen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aunts and uncles and godparents and grown-up friends. Every kid needs some assortment of 'em anyway; might as well make us useful from time to time.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

i wish i had kids so i could raise them this way. but that's not really a good reason for having kids, is it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We had the same problem when we lived in an apartment complex. I would have thought they would be widely trick-or-treated upon, due to having close-together doors, but no. One year we got a kid dressed as a very chilly and ice-burned hockey player (hockey jersey and shorts), and that was it. No other trick-or-treaters. Very sad.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

(i meant to ask you what are the T-or-T hours around here? does it end at like 8 or 9 or ...? jd and the dog are trying to stay the hell away during all the mad doorbell times.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think that wanting to do traditional fun and/or good things with kids is allowed to be a component when possible.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Ista is not at all sure about this Halloween stuff. She really likes little monkeys, but they never stay long enough to be fun, and they seem bent on Taking Her Stuff.

You will have to tell me what the Charleyboy makes of it all.

[carbonel]

Ask meee! I always loved trick-or-treating, and I'd love to have a young one to take along when he or she is too young to go along.

[evangoer.livejournal.com]

I've been living in apartments and condos for so long that I've completely missed out on this trend of "driving them to the next house a few yards down the road." Wow. I thought things like that only happened in L.A. Story.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Caught by the invisible disability, again. I don't like the driving from house to house at 5 mph. I consider it a hazard. I think that they should let the kids out, then arrange to pick them up at the end of the block, or at the end of a circuit, rather than trying to control them from the car moment by moment. I hope that this isn't too offensive for people like yourself who can't walk their kids.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

OMG, I've never seen this car trick or treating before. I do occasionally see adults driving their kids around on their paper route, though.

Our house has a lot of stairs. Our house gets skipped frequently.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

We get the very young ones starting at 6:30, the main run is between 7 and 8, and we turn our lights off by 8:30, because by then it's mostly big teens and young college kids, and they can buy their own damn candy. Your end of things might be different, you have more families down by you.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

I hope so! You give up some kinds of fun especially with a small kid, it seems only fair and right that you should get new fun!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Car trick-or-treating is severe weaksauce.

I would like to know what happened to dumping all the neighbourhood kids on one (1) adult to writhe down the street in a mass of costumes, while the rest of the adults stayed at home to dispense their nice candy.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

No one's ever come here. For four years I was able to convince my wife we needed to buy a big bag of full-sized Reese's PB cups (none of those malevolently misnamed "Fun" sized candy bars from us!) and, shuckydarns, just had to have the whole bag to ourselves 'cause no one came. Then she decided to pay attention to history and skip getting any. Dagnabbit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In my childhood it was two, so that they could talk to each other while the kids did their trick-or-treating.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

I love this post, Marissa.

The fact that I grew up in NYC doesn't really apply to this, except that it was a fairly densely packed urban community, so while I've seen what you wrote about in action in the small town I went to high school in...it's a completely alien concept to me.

Of COURSE the kids should walk from house to house and of COURSE the kids go up all the stairs if the lights are on (except the scary looking houses, of course...and then you give it a shot anyway...and I mean scary in a Stephen King sort of way, not like a crack house).

And I promise you, that when I have kids (it'll be a while), they're walking. They'll appreciate Halloween like I did...uphill...in the snow...both ways.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

I bought candy for the first time as an adult last year, excited to have T&T. I figured that I see plenty of kids out when I'm walking the dog, I'll get at least eight or twelve.

Not one.

I was crushed.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

If you don't go uphill in the snow, how do you ever get to sled back down again? It's like a metaphor er somethin'.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Growing up we trick or treated at the neighbors' (rowhouse streets have *plenty* of doors) on our blocks and a few others and on summer nights we played on the street when young and sat and talked to the neighbors when older. One thing I hated about the street where I lived in AZ was having all those kids I'd never seen before coming around asking for candy. I'd have been fine with a few strangers, but I mean *all* the trick-or-treaters were people I didn't know. It was a street where no one really talked to each other; we exchanged a few words with our next door neighbors and none with any others. After a while I gave up on it. What fun is giving candy only to strangers?

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

If you have a tolerant big kid or teenager in your world your kid will feel like the coolest thing ever. The older buddy will also feel good and get candy. I took a younger child when I was "too old" and it was good for both of us.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Okay, I do have friends who drive the trick or treaters because they are in Alaska and it snows on Halloween unless it is too cold. If it is too cold for snow, cheating becomes a lot more reasonable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, she said skeptically. Trick-or-treating in the snow is just how life goes (every year I want the return of the Halloween Blizzard of '91), and I kind of think if it's too cold for snow, it's better to only go to a few houses than to drive around.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

And to my mind the car becomes infinitely reasonable when you invoke "snow." "Snow" is BAD in my universe. I would be happy to never again be where it is actively snowing ever. I loved trick or treating though, so any way to do it while overcoming snow strikes me as rational. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think that you have hit on the perfect solution, though, in living in the south. Problem solved!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Yep. Although I will point out that we're about 90 minutes from snow here. Less some years. We're 50 minutes from Jackson where "it never snows" except for the two winters I've lived there. I mean, literally, Grandma says that those are the only two times in my lifetime it has snowed. Because it hates me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I just can't get my head around snow as something people drive to see. Just...ack.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

This too seems eminently sensible.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...I do sort of love the looks on their faces when they see it, though. :)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

We haven't had a trick-or-treater yet today. We are on a dead-end side street, but it's a very short dead-end side street right off the main drag with half a dozen houses! I have a bag of Snickers and a bag of Mounds just waiting for some kids. It's early yet. Only seven. Maybe they'll still come?

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

One can hope. I didn't buy any this year. Still no knocks. I have a little bit left over from my Disney trip, so I'll hand that out if anyone comes.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

Our first batch tonight came in a minivan. I was annoyed enough when it dumped them out at our neighbors- but then they piled back in and rode next door to our house?!

I gave them candy anyway.

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

Seeing the array of costumes. Meeting the kids.

[laurel]

I'm totally with you on all of this stuff. Excellent post. We always take turns with the presents, though sometimes simultaneous opening occurs if someone got multiple people the same thing. 'Course with my family it's a small group, I suppose the temptation gets greater to open more things at once with larger crowds or amounts of presents, but it just seems to miss the point of the whole endeavor.

Since I've lived here, we haven't had trick-or-treaters 'til this year. The first couple of years we decorated and left lights on and did what we could to indicate "hey, we'll give you candy!" but got no visitors. Last year we just didn't bother and then of course were in the basement when we thought we heard the doorbell, but didn't get upstairs in time and wouldn't have had any candy anyway. D'oh! Kevin's been in this house 18 years or so and says he's never gotten many trick-or-treaters, just a few if he's lucky.

This year Kevin says we had a total of 12, in 3 or 4 batches (he went to the door). Yay! Gave out Nut Goodies (full size, I don't think they come in "Fun size" and if they do, I don't want to know about it). Had our usual fall lights, plus a light up jack-o-lantern and we turned the porch light on. He says they were older kids, mostly. I suspect once the first batch got decent candy, they told (or texted) another group. But there was a pair of not-as-old kids who found us, at least.

I am a bit bummed that our neighbor kid didn't come over. He's at a good trick-or-treating age and we were sitting on our porch as his Dad took a picture of him on their lawn and led him off south of here. We haven't had many interactions with those neighbors and it'd be an obvious good way to say hello to each other. Oh, well. If I'd been having a better day, I might've tried catching their eye or calling them over.

Suspect our block doesn't get many trick or treaters because there are multiple apartment/condo buildings on it, plus businesses, so it just doesn't have all that many houses compared to most blocks in S. Mpls. And no one really decorates much for Halloween on our block. Our neighbor's have a few things that their kid put up and we have our little bitty display, but that seems to be the extent of it. Still-- if you live on the block, you should go from door to door or at least to the ones with their front lights on.

We never got many trick-or-treaters at my folks house when I was a kid because the driveway is off of a county highway and the house is set back a ways from it. My parents turn off the lights and don't bother with it at all any more.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One year my relatives made the rule that you could only give a maximum of three packages per person. I jumped through hoops to make sure that the people who were getting a paperback plus a CD plus etc. etc. instead of one nice sweater or whatever had thematic boxes with a little story inside about the theme of the gift. My mom did the same. Neither of us made the rule, and we were the only ones who followed it. Never again!