i keep seeing these videos of parents and grown adults of all sorts wondering why the kids aren’t trick-or-treating this year. and then i see the videos from the trick-or-treaters’ parents asking why no one’s giving out candy this year, and why none of the houses have decorations.
“we’ve lost the plot,” they say. “this is not at all how it was when we were kids,” they’ll lament. they’ll blame trunk-or-treating or other fall festivals being too close together, forgetting entirely that no candy-loving kid will turn down a second chance to get free candy in the same week. like, seriously.
more likely are the ever more expensive bags of “fun-sized” candy barely larger than the thank-you mints from Olive Garden. and even those seem smaller (or at least thinner) than they once were. or the ludicrously expensive, yet somehow fragile and shitty, Halloween costumes and masks that Spirit and its ilk peddle every year. more than a few blamed the possibility of rain, even though that didn’t happen (at least here) until much later in the evening.
yet, when i was driving both to and from my parents’ house for my birthday lunch get-together, i saw parking lots of churches filled with open trunks, bouncy castles, and face-painting booths. i saw more than a few daytime garage sales and roadside candy stops, lots of Halloween decorations here and there of varying degrees… it’s there; it’s just harder to find this year.
i remember one year, my mom and aunt took me and my cousin to the local mall to go trick-or-treating. it was, at least by a Halloween-born twelve-year-old’s standards, a deeply weird experience. it’s one thing when you’re in an apartment complex full of families and nice neighbors. it’s yet another when you’re begging for your sweets from the dressed-to-the-nines salesman at the Kay jewelry store or the disinterested checkout clerk at the Journeys Shoes. but hey, at least there’s a nice place in the middle to sit and eat, it’s air-conditioned, well-lit, and has its own soundtrack. (the mall owner thought it would be neat to play stuff like “Thriller” over the PA system.) it sure as hell wasn’t “traditional” by any stretch of the imagination, but we had a good time regardless.
i feel like that’s what matters the most, in the end. trunk-or-treat events are basically just mini-Halloween neighborhood block parties, just usually happening during daylight hours. if anything, it gives you the opportunity to double-dip: once at trunk-or-treat at the Baptist church up the road, then one more time at the block party in the rich neighborhood that gives out full-size candy bars and has the Spider-Man stunt show.
i think, this year more than most in recent memory, the main issue was really simple: real life is scarier than any horror movie could hope to be right now. at least, that’s the sentiment i seem to be getting from a lot of folks online and in my little orbit. and yeah, i absolutely agree. we didn’t do anything special this year, and we didn’t leave our light on or buy any candy to hand out. the one bag we did manage to snag was like $30 and mostly tiny bites of Snickers. it’s years like these that make me wish it were more socially acceptable to hand out handmade treats like it used to be, in the long, long ago.
i turned 33 this year, and it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. i’ve been through 33 Halloweens now. if i try hard enough, i can usually remember something unique about each one. my dad likes to tell the story of one of my first Halloween nights, when we were still living near my Granny in a sleepy little Macon suburb near the interstate. dad says we walked up to a house where someone was handing out candy, and i gleefully said “trick or treat!” to the lady who answered. she happily gave me candy, and asked me if i was having a good Halloween night. i responded rather proudly, “yes ma’am! it’s my birthday!” she looked to my parents and asked if that was true, to which they said yes, i really was born on Halloween. she held up a finger, disappeared for a second, then returned to the door with a small Matchbox toy car, which she gifted to me, saying, “well then happy birthday to you!” that little gesture made me so happy that i, at least according to dad’s retelling, went on to tell every other person who answered their door that night that it was my birthday in the hopes of getting more treats.
dad retold this story this year at lunch with his mom there, so i thought i’d share with you.
i hope Halloween this year was good for you, if you’re reading this. i hope it continues to give you reasons to make memories with friends and family, to enjoy playing a character or dressing up in something that makes you feel powerful.