The past couple of years, the amount of kids out on Halloween has dwindled down in my neighborhood. This year, my wife and I were at her cousin’s house and we saw maybe a couple of kids walking around. My wife blames people going to Trunk or Treat things. We both work in retail, so we see more of the public, and nobody was in costume. What was everybody’s experience with Halloween this year?
Trunk or treats and parents being afraid of the devil are to blame. Most parents won’t even let their kids ride the bus these days let alone go to a strangers. The msm has parents constantly afraid that satan will abduct their kid. So yeah things trunk or treat in church parking lot evolved and killed normal trick or treat
Yeah.
I “blame” popular neighborhoods. Used to be you went around your neighborhood or went with a friend in town if you were more rural or something.
Now there are “it” neighborhoods or even small towns that seem to attract large groups, it’s almost like a block party. Tons of people arrive, there’s wild and extreme halloween decorations, effort gets put into costumes, and sometimes even full-size candy bars. My kids started going to popular areas with friends, one friend lives in a neighborhood like that so everyone uses his house as a starting point. It’s cool, but unfortunately large gatherings tend to bring assholes, too, and now there’s a cop nearby on standby because some people have to be dipshits and start being destructive or try to start fights.
We barely handed out one bag of candy in our neighborhood, last year we went through two big ones.
There’s definitely something to this popular neighborhoods theory.
As an anecdote from my dense urban area, there’s a stretch of a few residential blocks that have become the most popular spot within walking distance of my home, and it’s largely due to the trick or treating “geography” of the area: horizontal density of lots of participating homes per block, wide sidewalks, single lane roads with lots of stop signs and crosswalks (inconvenient for through traffic).
The blocks with major stroads get avoided for pedestrian safety reasons, and the blocks with big apartment buildings or commercial storefronts get avoided because there’s not a lot of trick or treating available.
So it creates hot spots, which feed back onto themselves as the residents of those hot blocks lean more heavily into decorations and candy and costumes the next year.
And what I’m describing is kinda a micro sized distribution of this phenomenon, where the hotspots are only maybe a 2x2 grid of city blocks, next to completely dead zones of 2x2 city blocks. I imagine in a suburban area that clustering effect can intensify, especially if everyone is driving.
It was bonkers this year!
In excess of 650 candy given out, though not my usual Famous Amos packs (wildly more expensive than last year). A solid wall of kids and families from 7-8:30 when we ran out.
I do go crazy for decorating and candy delivery mechanism.
We also did a record amount of candy this year. Nice weather for it.
Edit: I would say we did between 350 and 400 pieces, 2 per kid. My neighborhood started at 5 ish and I turned out the lights at 8.
Moved into my house in 2017. Neighborhood has smaller kids. I bought candy for a number of years and had less than 20 groups in the entire ~5 year span. So I just stopped buying candy and leave my lights off now. Even reviewing doorbell footage there were only like a handful of groups walking around this year.
Trunk or treats have blown up out here. Why walk miles through the neighborhood for a couple hours when 30-60 minutes through a parking lot or two gets you the same amount. Especially at malls with hundreds of cars.
We use to trick or treat on rollerblades as kids to cover more ground. Trick or treating has really gone down hill. I remember being a teenager and handing candy out at my parent’s house. We got literal hundreds of kids. Like you basically were better off just sitting at the front door or on the porch if the weather was nice. The stream of kids was practically constant. That was decades ago and their neighborhood has aged out a bit but they still get a ridiculously higher number than I’ve ever gotten.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but Trunk or Treat for lazy and/or helicopter parents has cannibalized door to door visits.
Had 1 visit, normally 5 or so.
But actually its pretty nice. I dont like these commercial days where its all about buying shit like costumes and candy.
Maybe we should donate that money to some organisation instead of getting fat and ugly eating candy.
Depending on your neighborhood and how long you’ve lived there, you’ll see ebb and flow overtime. Families age out but stay in the neighborhood. My neighborhood actually saw an uptick for the first time since before COVID. We had some old families move out and replaced with just a few families with kids.
We normally have kids up until 11 pm, this year we had less then normal, and only 3 after 10 pm. We live on a main street, and are the known Halloween house with the way we decorate. We probably had 1/3 less this year. We attribute it to the trunk or treats. Our next door neighbor took his kids trunk or treating 6 times in the past week. Safer? Maybe. Lazier? Very much so.
We had zero this year. We even put out decorations and every year we give out full size bars and pokemon packs. Live in the center of town in a dense neighborhood. I do think part of the reason is none of the street lights ever are on anymore
No one this year because of a stupid baseball game and suddenly everyone cares about baseball because go local team. Canada is supposed to be “elbows out” but we throw money at US team sports that over schedule.
Hey but the Leafs won last night.
I got 42 trick or treaters.
UK - Only had one kid come and had lots of treats. My own kids went out and got quite a haul, but most people had left bowls out so they didn’t knock on many doors (they know only to go to decorated houses).
For the last few years, there seem to be more people decorating and putting treats out than there are kids going out. Plus our weather has been shit.
Our street only has 2 houses that do it, so everyone drives right on by our block. Some of them go to parties instead, some of them are just lazy and disinterested.
I’ve kind of shamed people into decorating for Christmas, I made my house elegantly lit with a warm white glow and theirs were dark and depressing. But Halloween, just the 2 of us for years.
We’re in a high crime city so a lot of folks do trunk-or-treats and I get that, but, those kids are gonna be adults that have to learn to live here too. There’s something humanizing about going up to strangers doors, finding out your neighbors aren’t actually monsters or assholes, but kind people.
I rent, so you don’t get a chance to pass out candy anymore, but it was a bright spot in my childhood. I’m sad that we’ve abandoned that.
Plus, you got to peak into all your neighbors doors and see a bit of their life and it was a positive experience for all involved.
I rent, and I have the most decorated house in 2 miles.
I’m not in single family detached home.
I’m not either, but I live in a town home style place with a yard, but I’ve decorated everything from an apartment door to a house. You can still celebrate in many ways.
For my neighborhood it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it in 17 years. A lot of home made costumes, even teenagers dressing up and getting in on the action with the gaggles of little kids. A few houses even did mini haunted houses in the front yards and garages. A lot of other houses had people chilling in the driveways with a small fire going. It was in the 50s (F) so not particularly warm either… I’m in a lower to middle class area, no HOA neighborhood so people do what they want with decorating and it’s great.
This is really wholesome thanks for commenting!
Lots of neighborhoods just don’t have that many kids left. They’ve grown. Easily 80% of my suburban neighborhood is over 65. And they’ve been here since the 90s.
When young families can’t buy homes their trick-or-treating becomes relegated to their apartment complex or (when those complexes are sketchy) to trunk or treats.
