I used to LOVE Halloween. It was fun to see all the kids in costume, to get to feel all benevolent giving out treats and to just generally enjoy the season.
But as time has rolled on I've become more and more ambivalent about the waste and unhealthiness of this holiday. I mean, I want to support the kids and all, but is giving them toxic treats wrapped in plastic really the best way to do that?
For a while, I decided the thing to do was to give little toys instead of candy. So I went online and bought a bunch of small party favor type toys. But, they're all made in China and 99% of them are plastic... is that really better? Plus, the kids really want candy.
Then I though I'd buy bulk candy wrapped in foil. But it's hard to find, and still, do I really want to contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic?
But the thing that's really bothering me is much more fundamental. It's the way trick-or-treating is done these days. It used to be that trick-or-treating was an opportunity to be neighborly and get to see all of the neighborhood kids having fun.
But these days, there aren't that many kids left on my block, and the past few years I've been the only house with the porch light on.
But that hasn't meant that I've seen any fewer trick-or-treaters. In fact, each year there are more and more. But it's not because neighborhood kids are walking further, the parents just load them all into the SUV and drive them around the neighborhood to houses with the porch light on.
So I'll get upwards of 100 trick-or-treaters, but only one or two are kids I recognize. The rest seem to be shipped in from who knows where. The cars pull up, and about 10-12 kids pile out - they knock on the door demanding candy and then pile back into the car.
Is this just me, or does this seem like it's not really in keeping with the spirit of the holiday? I suppose it's hard to blame them when there are so few houses giving out candy, but still... it's not like the kids who show up don't already have several pounds of candy in their loot bags.
And then as the evening progresses, the trick-or-treat thugs start to show up.
These are the guys who are WAY too old to be out there, and look a lot more like gang members than children. I mean seriously guys, if you're 6 inches taller than me, I think it's time to give it up.
But even more disturbing, each year I get a few adult trick-or-treaters. Some of them don't even bother to dress up, they just knock on the door and ask for candy. Part of me wonders if they're homeless or what.
Add to all that the fact that the whole event is quite stressful on the cats since they have to be locked in the basement, and Sputty's been having a rough week, I'm leaning heavily toward boycotting the whole thing.
I did buy a bit of chocolate so I'd have something to give out if some of the younger neighborhood kids show up before dark, but I think that I'm just gonna leave the porch light off and hide out in the back part of the house.
So what do you think? Am I being a total grinch? Do you participate in trick-or-treating? How do you deal with all of the issues I just complained about? I'd love to hear how other people deal with this holiday.
Not doing it this year. People drive their kids to our neighborhood. It's not kids you know anymore. And whole families go -- so they don't give out candy. It seems families want us to give candy but they don't stay home to give it out. Seems to one-sided to me. Sorry, I'm just getting cheap and lazy in my old age!
ReplyDeleteExactly! It just starts to feel like I'm being taken advantage of.
DeleteAs someone with small kids, both parents like to go to experience it with them. However, when we do this, we leave out a bowl of goodies.
DeleteI think my sister has the right idea. She makes up special treat bags for the neighbourhood kids she knows. Everyone else gets the inexpensive stuff. I gave out small-size comic books once - the local comics shop was selling packs of them for 25 cents a comic and we only get about 40 kids. So for $10 there were a lot of happy kids.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea. I don't actually know any of the kids in the neighborhood anymore. I know there are 2 or 3 on the block, but I've never met them. Comic books are a great idea - no plastic or sugar.
DeleteTrick or treating is not really done here in Australia (although kids do try sometimes). I don't think anyone will be coming to my door this year because it's under the house and not very obvious (plus my landlords have a doberman!)
ReplyDeleteWhen we lived in the US for a year, one of the highlights was trick or treating. We did it properly though, dressed in scary costumes and walked around the block with my dad (it was 20 years ago!). That's crazy that parents are driving kids between houses to get candy. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic!
PS. I've heard of people handing out glow sticks (still plastic, but kids like them)
I thought about glow sticks one year, but I couldn't find any for less than a dollar a piece, and $100 just seemed like way too much to spend. Plus I heard that they are really toxic if the kids somehow end up eating the stuff inside, so that sorta scared me off.
DeleteIf giving unwrapped stuff wasn't taboo, I'd just bake a big batch of Halloween cookies, but alas, the news is full of stories telling you to toss anything that's not factory sealed. Sigh.
I know we sort of talked about this on my blog, but we are handing out stickers and boxes of crayons (I found the dollar area of Target was 1/2 off...got packages with 8 crayon boxes w/ 4 crayons per box for $0.50 each. I love that these are wholly consumable/degradable). I was going to print out coloring pages, but if other kids are anything like my oldest, finding a crumpled paper by the end of the night would be traumatic; thus going with the stickers. My goal for trick-or-treating (I think...I still have 4 days to figure it out) is to just walk our "lower income" neighborhood for as long as a 3 and 5 year old are willing to walk. I hope that won't be too long. I'll be giving them small paper bags (like lunch/small present size) to encourage less candy. However, I've found that because my boys are young and cute, they are often given more candy than the older kids. I'll keep you posted on how it goes :)
ReplyDeleteI love the crayons and stickers idea... and I'm snickering at what the teenage thugs would think about that! :-)
DeleteHeh. Yes!
DeleteTrick or treating isn't a massive thing in the UK- some people do it- but we only ever carved pumpkins, and never did the asking for sweets thing. My parents have a 'no trick or treaters' sign which I think the local council handed out to stop those that don't want to be bothered being bothered :) So I vote for turning off the light and hiding!
ReplyDeleteCan't believe people don't walk between houses, honestly!
On some level I love the whole trick-or-treating thing... it just seems like it's gotten out of hand. Leaning heavily toward hiding out...
DeleteIt's interesting - I grew up in the US and lived there until I was 26
ReplyDeletebut I find it really annoying how the big retailers try to promote
Halloween here in Australia. I absolutely refuse to buy into
that - it isn't a traditional holiday here and I lock our front gate all
night on the 31st!
Ha! Having a lockable front gate would certainly help. My next door neighbors have a fence that includes the front yard and two big scary dogs, so I doubt they ever get anyone knocking on their door!
DeleteI agree with all of your sentiments. When I was growing up, we weren't allowed to trick-or-treat after we were 12 years old. We got around that by doing trick-or treat for Unicef when we were older. It happened the Sunday after. We usually just got a few pennies for our boxes, but occasionally would get candy too. What a treat. :)
ReplyDeleteHowever, at our house we did get a lot of kids because we lived in town. It was a very rural community and most of the kids did not have a neighborhood to go to. Farms just take too much effort to go to house to house. In the corollary to today, we don't get a lot of kids because more walking is required here because the houses are farther apart than they are in the next neighborhood over. I give bigger and more treats to the kids I know, and small candy to the older kids (high school) and the ones I don't know.
Quite frankly, if I were you, I'd turn out the lights and not worry about it. Too bad it has come to this.
I like the idea of giving different treats to different kids. The last few years I actually bought little treat bags and pre-filled them so I wouldn't have to make decisions when the kids came to the door, because if you just give them one or two pieces of candy, you can hear them complaining as they walk away. Grrrrr....
DeleteIt's okay to boycott it. I like to leave the house and go to a movie. Though this year a friend invited us to her place where she has a cook-out on the driveway and leaves a big cauldron of candy out for trick-or-treaters. She lives in a working-class neighborhood where people still walk.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was still giving out treats, I learned to hand them out. I'd prefer to let people pick out their favorite, but even if I said aloud "Take your favorite one" or even "Take two," they usually tried to grab the biggest handful they could.
My last employer sets up a festival for staff kids that is manned by staff volunteers. (This idea was started by staff and then the administration made it official.) There may be similar neighborhood festivals you could volunteer for to participate in a more fun way. (These probably would have happened over the weekend, but it's something you can look into for next time.)
We used to do a Halloween party/recital each year at the music school where I worked. It was great fun and the kids all loved it.
DeleteI think it's really the whole idea that we're teaching kids to be greedy that gets me the most. Or maybe it's just that this situation brings me face to face with the greed that already exists, but the grabbing handfuls of candy thing really annoys me!
Very interesting post as it corresponds exactly with my feelings about the plastic wrapped junk food.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I love Halloween-the autumn colours, the pumpkins, the whole witchy theme and cute ghosties, I have handmade Halloween decorations throughout, from black cat placemats to walhangings to wooden ghosties outside.l can hardly turn off my lights with all that going on.
I do understand about the kids being trucked but it isn't that obvious in our neighbourhood in fact we are getting less and less kids every year, but many of them are local kids. I love to see the costumes and I always try to guess what they are- though that's getting harder the further removed I get from pop culture:) I chat with parents and the little ones are so adorable trying to get up the stairs and remember the words to "trick or treat".
Many times parents thank me for putting up the decorations outside and pictures get taken in front of the Halloween signpost.
I don't mind the older kids I've always found them polite and really kids any age like candy.
So for now I'll continue my Halloween adventures and do my bit for the planet in other ways to make up for it
Marie
Marie, I am so glad to know that there are still people like you who really get into the whole spirit of the holiday.
DeleteYou know, the more I think about it, the more I think that my feelings are being colored by the fact that so few of my neighbors participate anymore. If every house on the block were handing out candy then it would be a total no-brainer and I'd feel like we were all doing a neighborhood thing together. As it is, I just feel like I'm the last sucker out there, spending $75-$100 on candy for kids who don't need it and don't really appreciate it. Sigh.
You write what others think! I like Halloween--to a point. I always liked dressing up and my kids (10 and almost 8) also like costumes and honestly, I think that's their favorite part of the experience. My son starts middle school next year and I had always thought that would be when I would cut the experience off, but he so enjoys costuming that I may extend it a year or 2. I like the little ones in costume and that's fun to see--like you, I notice that the younger kids and the families arrive at our door earlier in the evening and the high school kids show up later. I have to say, thus far the big kids have been polite, but if we started having problems, I would probably have my light on for the first hour and off for the last hour.
ReplyDeleteI go back and forth on the items we hand out. This year I'm doing a combination of Smarties (cheap!) and M&M packages. For several years I've tried doing "healthier" options--the prepackaged pretzels were too blah but the gummy bears went over well. One year I found teddy grahams and that was my favorite but I haven't seen it since. One household we went to gave us microwave popcorn packages, which I thought was a great idea, but I've never found the Halloween version in the stores.
Having kids, I find that I get frustrated that Halloween is a multi-night event. We have the cub scouts party, the school trunk-or-treat, as well as the actual Halloween night itself. WAY more candy than my kids need and I usually send it to work w/my husband to give away.
We have a combination of trick-or-treaters who are local kids and kids who are shuttled in. My house is on a main road, which limits our numbers--we probably average about 40 kids/year--but there is a subdivision immediately behind us and they get 100-200 kids, many of whom are driven in. I think it gets tremendously expensive for those households.
Speaking of expense, costumes in stores are crazy-expensive. I am shocked at families I know who routinely shell out $20-30 per costume per kid--that would be $40-60 for my two kids and I have a small family! We make our costumes--I find it's more fun for them and more creative.
My summary thoughts? If you don't feel like handing out treats,don't bother--or maybe do it early in the evening and then turn out your light. To me, the concept is similar to birthdays and Christmas gifts--yes, we as a family recognize both, but total greed and gluttony is ugly and Halloween (as well as birthdays and Christmas) is a great opportunity to teach my children that you can have fun without making a total pig of yourself.
You describe my mixed feelings so very well. I love the costumes and the fun, but each year it just seems to be more, more, more! I mean, when we were kids we each had a small plastic pumpkin to collect our candy in, but these days kids arrive with grocery sacks and pillow cases. I mean seriously, who needs that much candy?
DeleteThis, at the heart, is really a parenting issue. I go with my kids for safety reasons (although I might allow a middle school child to go without an adult--but carrying my cell phone and with a specific curfew!) but also to ensure that they DON'T grab handfuls and they say "thank you" afterwards. I have a wonderful and wise friend who once told me that every situation that comes up in parenting is an "opportunity for learning". I want my children to learn to be generous and giving primarily, but I also want them to learn to be gracious receivers when the opportunity arises. Maybe I'm drawing the wrong conclusion, but it seems to me that there are a lot of parents out there who haven't really grown up and they are raising children, and it's disheartening! Still, I have to think there are some nice kids/families who come to your door who are just out for a fun evening.
DeleteYou are completely right, both about children raising children and about there being some very nice and well behaved children who show up at my doorstep also... hence my quandary!
DeleteHi Cat,
ReplyDeleteI've been going back and forth on what to do about Hallowe'en this year. My thoughts have been -- I don't want a huge surplus of leftover candy, I sometimes feel like I'm fueling the greed in some of the neighborhood kids, and it's just that there are so many people around who have much more basic needs than a pile of candy.
I wanted to just give out money, but my family vetoed that one. It sounded simple, and would address the leftover candy issue. No leftovers with money. And it didn't help anything with hunger and need in our area. I seriously doubt any of the neighbor kids would be donating the coins I handed out, to a local food bank.
So, what did I decide? I bought 1 bag of fun size treats, M&Ms. The bag says there are 21 treats in it. We get between 15 and 20 trick or treaters, most years. If we have more than 21 trick or treaters, I'll give out money until 8:45 PM, then the lights are turned off. If there are leftover M&Ms, they'll be used to decorate a birthday cake mid-November. And . . . for every trick or treater we get, our family has decided to spend a dollar on groceries for the local food bank.
That sounds like a great compromise, and the fact that you can limit yourself to just giving each kid one piece is great too. I always feel guilty because they give me really dirty looks if I don't give each kid a whole handful of candy. Perhaps that's my own "issue" that I need to deal with separately!
DeleteThat's really too bad. I would completely understand if you chose to skip Halloween.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I loved getting pretzels and apples - it was something different (there's only so much candy I can eat before I'm sick of it), but I guess with all the crazy news reports it would just be thrown away. I adore Dar's comic book idea! I have to look into that next year.
I totally wish it was OK to give stuff like apples or homemade cookies because that would make it so much more fun for me. It's just a shame what it's all come to these days. Sigh.
DeleteHalloween has always been one of my least favorite holidays. i hate the door-to-door begging that goes on. we actually don't have many kids that come to our house...probably 15 or so. My son is 14 and is going to his friends house to hang out. he hardly ever ate anything he would get when he went trick or treating so he definitely wont miss it. I usually hand out smarties (cuz they are my favorite) and buy a few small packages at the dollar tree. kit kats, reeses and m&ms. each pkg only has 5-6 pieces in it. I also donate/buy a couple of Wendys' frosties coupon books and give one or two coupons to the little ones....better than giving them candy. (they get a junior frosty for each coupon). I donate a dollar (which goes to adoption charity) and get 10 coupons. Whatever coupons are left, my son gets frostys after karate sometimes! nothing goes to waste.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't feel back leaving your light off and hanging out in your house. why upset the cats and give the town you live in sugar highs. if there are a few kids in your neighborhood you do want to give to, make up little bags and go visit them before trick or treating starts. that way you wont feel bad about not having your light on.
I think the cats is a huge issue for me this year in particular. With two of the four being sick, I just hate to do anything that will add to their stress level. There's really only one girl on the block, and I've only met her one time - last Halloween in fact! I might just hand out candy until dark and then leave what's left in a bowl on the porch.
DeleteI wouldn't blame you one bit for boycotting Halloween from now on. Like you, there are very few young children in my neighborhood and yet when it's time to hand out the candy, my neighborhood is swarming with kids (little and too-big-to-beg-for-candy). Who REALLY benefits from the holiday? Candymakers, the stores selling the candy and dentists. Not only is it expensive to hand out candy to complete strangers, but all that plastic waste! Not to mention how freaked out my cats get having strangers in my yard. So, the porch light stays off, the curtains stay closed and the kitties and I have a peaceful Halloween. And I don't feel guilty one bit!
ReplyDeleteHalloween grinches UNITE!!!
DeleteI, too, live in the UK and the holiday is not that popular here on the whole. I usually forget it is the 31st Oct and don't answer the door. One year soon after I moved into this particular house, I arrived home from work hungry and tired. I was in the kitchen making supper when all of a sudden this gang of kids descended from nowhere and banged on the door! I jumped out of my skin because I could see them behind the frosted glass. When I didn't respond, one of them pushed open the cat flap and yelled "give us some food, we're hungreeee!" Needless to say I didn't. No, not my favourite holiday. Anyway, we have our own Guy Fawkes night on 5th November. Much more fun - fireworks and bonfires!
ReplyDeleteFireworks and bonfires sound infinitely superior to processed sugar and garbage! I did cave in and bought a big box of York Peppermint Patties when I was at Costco yesterday... but I still haven't decided if I'm gonna participate or not. If I decide not to, I'll just adhere them directly to my hips! :-)
DeleteHalloween is pretty much my favorite holiday for sentimental reasons. Starting when I was 4 years old I was sick as a kid -- recurrent pneumonias every year that would start around Halloween and keep coming, one every 6 to 10 weeks all winter till about April. Because I often was fighting off my first pneumonia of the year at Halloween, or because my mom was scared it was too cold out and I'd get sick, when I was five or so we starting a new ritual, inspired by two neighborhood spinster sisters we encountered trick-or-treating when I was 3. The dressed up as witches and scared all the kids that came to their door. They were unforgettable and we got a picture of them that I still have. The kids were too scared to go to their door, so the witches would throw the candy down at us (mostly hard candy). So when I was 5 that's what my mom and I started doing -- dressing as witches and scaring the kids who came to the door. The kids LOVED it! They would come back and back over and over. So when I got older and healthier, I never even wanted to go out trick or treating, it was waaaayyyyyy more fun to stay home and scare the kids. My mom is 80 this year and living with Stage 4 cancer, so we are definitely doing Halloween . . . it is our auld lang sine.
DeleteOh Stefani, that is such a sweet story, and I'm so sorry to hear that your mom is sick. I hope the two of you have an absolutely fantastic Halloween!
DeleteHi! I know this post is a year old, but I found it when I was Goggling around for suggestions as to what to do about Halloween this year. I have really come to hate it, for some of the reasons you bring up here.
ReplyDeleteThis will be our third Halloween in this house. It's a nice, quiet older neighborhood, and there are very few kids here. Most people are like us, older folks who either never had kids at all, or empty nesters. Nonetheless, the first Halloween we were here, I decided to give out candy. We have five cats, the doorbell and endless knocking upsets them, so I set up shop on the front porch right at 6PM (trick or treat here is supposed to go from 6-8PM).
At first it was okay, I had a few little kids in cute costumes come by, accompanied by parents who encouraged them to say please and thank you. But, as I said, there aren't many families with small kids in walking distance here, I think I got maybe half a dozen tops.
At around 6:30, I saw a couple of big white vans pulling up across the street. To my horror, they were dropping off gangs of tween/teen thugs, none of them in costume (unless you count dressing all in black as a "costume". They were noisy, rude, did not say please or thank you, and some of them even complained about the candy I was giving out. No parents or other adults in sight, whoever was dropping them off drove away. No more kids in cute costumes came, the streets now belonged to these nasty little thugs, and I didn't like it one bit. When my husband came home from work at 7PM, I brought in my chair and the bucket of candy, turned off the lights, and we went out to dinner.
Last year, I did not buy any candy at all. At about 5PM, I called a cab and went to a bar/restaurant downtown, hanging out at the bar for happy hour, which that day seemed to be a meeting of the I HATE HALLOWEEN club. Before I left, I made sure any lights visible from the street were off, including the porch light. I didn't want the house to be completely dark, for the cats' benefit. I also set up an iPod with a speaker, and put a classical playlist on auto-shuffle; classical music is very calming to pets.
My husband met me at the restaurant after he got off work, we had dinner, and got home around 9PM or so, an hour after the sanctioned beg-fest was supposed to be over. We didn't see any more black-clad thugs wandering the streets, no vans dropping them off, and were relieved that it was over for another year.
We went into the house, put on lights, and the first thing I noticed was that no cats were there to greet us, as they normally do after we've been out. I could not find any cats anywhere downstairs in any of their usual spots. I went upstairs and didn't see any cats on the beds, either. I finally found all five of them, hiding under the bed in the back bedroom, scared to come out. They NEVER do that!
It didn't take me long to put two and two together and realize what happened. The bused-in non-costumed thugs IGNORED the rule of the turned off porch lights, and kept ringing the bell anyway. Probably knocking, too. And for what? There was nobody there to give them any candy, why waste time bothering with this house in the first place? All it did was upset our cats. I was livid. How DARE these little juvenile delinquents invade OUR quiet neighborhood and scare people's pets! It took us a while to calm the cats down and get them to come out, that it was just us, and nobody was going to hurt them.
So now it's almost that time again. We still plan to be out that night, and my husband says that he can easily disable the doorbell. But that won't eliminate any knocking, nor will it eliminate loud-mouthed kids on the porch. So now I am trying to find some ideas as to what else we could possibly do.
Thanks for the post, and for letting me vent!
Ha! "... the sanctioned beg-fest" that is an apt description if ever there was one.
DeleteSo last year, what I finally decided to do was to leave a big bowl of candy out on the front porch with a sign telling kids to help themselves to a piece or two. Let's just say that it... um... didn't go so well. Here's the play by play in case you're interested:
http://ecocatlady.blogspot.com/2013/11/greed-or-grace-which-won-out.html
I think I'm just gonna skip the whole thing this year. I feel bad, but really, I'm tired of trying to hold up the Halloween mantle for the whole neighborhood!