My son’s elementary school does not allow anything remotely in the form of a Halloween party, because “Some people don’t celebrate it,” which I take as code for “Some Christian groups made a stink about it,” because they have a stupid “Winter Holiday Pageant” that consists of lots of Christmas songs that don’t mention Jesus, and that stupid dreidl song. There aren’t a lot of Jewish families, but enough to say that “Some” people at the school don’t celebrate Christmas. There are also Muslim families, Chinese families, JW families, and none of that has stopped the celebration of Chris-- “The Winter Holiday.”
Now, FWIW, they do let me bring in mini-Shlach Manos for my son’s class on Purim, which is a much more important holiday than Hanukkah (or course, there are eight or nine celebrations more important than Hanukkah).
Halloween is huge here. The kids have been planning for weeks. There are costume contests at school. They will trick or treat until they fall over. Some of the blocks get together and do themes. It’s really impressive. I think it’s a fun holiday for kids and adults. Who doesn’t like cutting loose a little now and then? Pretending to be someone or something else? All good fun. Halloween is part of the reason that Fall is my favorite season.
Here the older folks try to play it down. Probably because it speaks of Americanisms. But I mostly think because it tends to conflict with the Dia de los Muertos celebrations. Which is my celebration in Mexico.
But, the kids have adapted to Halloween. They love it.
I think the schools here allow Halloween costumes, though it’s been a while since I worked there. As for trick or treating, I get a lot of kids of ages from infancy to teens. I suspect some of them are brought in from other neighborhoods where the trick or treating isn’t that great, but as long as no one toilet papers my yard I don’t have a problem with that. I usually give out Reeses/Snickers type stuff but have non chocolate candy as well.
In Bergen County (northern) New Jersey, the stores and businesses on each town’s main street give out candy. The children get to dress in costumes and go trick or treating safely.
Times haven’t changed here in the Dallas suburbs - it’s still just like that. Little kids have parents nearby, but by the time they’re nine or ten they’re on their own. When kids get to high school, there’s less interest in it.
I loved it as a kid and still enjoy it as an adult. In fact, due to low turn-out in our neighborhood this year, my wife and I are already thinking about going in with some friends in a more active area for next year. It changes and I guess it always will. Some of our city schools do limited celebrations at school and none of our area churches have really come out against it. I blame the reduction around here on drugs, shootings and other personal safety issues. Plus most of the families around us are older and fewer houses had their porch lights on. Families around us have taken to driving the kids to the burbs (and one community tried to combat it by requiring specific town-issued bags for T&Ting) rather than having three or four houses every sketchy block or so to go knocking at. But even where some of my teen years were spent - secluded safe Levittown-type area - has had some fall-off. Maybe society is just moving past things like trick-or-treating.
Not my holiday. I buy my kid an off-the-rack costume and carve a pumpkin. Done. All my holiday enthusiasm goes into Christmas.
Unfortunately my kid is majorly into Halloween, so I feel a little guilty that I’m not making it as fun as it could be. Oh, well. When she grows up she can decorate as much as she wants.
In my Mesa neighborhood, it varies year to year. There’s no linear increase or decrease in participation. This year, there were fewer kids, but the overall level of costume quality was way up.
The only affect the churches seem to have is that, should the 31st be on a Sunday, the local dominant religion has enough pull that “Halloween” is officially moved to another day. The same thing with July 4th - if it is on a Sunday, fireworks move to another day. I think the local dominant religion has too much power over our the rest of us, but whaddya gonna do?
I love it. I have set up a mini haunted house in front of the digs for the last 25 years. I am a regular stop for people and I’m into a second generation now - folks that I scared as kids have grown up, gotten married and had families, and now they bring their kids by for me to scare them.
This year I had to modify it somewhat because it was raining off and on. Still got a couple of good screamers!
I regard the Australian version as a half assed sales pitch to sell bad food to idiots and their hellspawn. Likewise, when I see snow/ice/winter themes to Christmas stuff I want to puke. Like excuse me its a thousand degrees outside and this is Aussie. Pretenders to the otherwise can get wrecked, politely of course.
Around here Halloween is still popular but what I think has changed since I was a kid:
Adults are more into it than the adults were during my childhood.
Like many things in American life these days, it has become more organized and less local community oriented. When I was a kid, kids would go out in groups (mostly without parents except for the littlest ones) and trick or treat street by street. This still happens but much less than those days (I had maybe a 10 kids come to my door this year). What happens instead are organized Halloween parties, Trunk or Treat events (where a Church or some other community group organizes cars in a parking lot with treats and kids go car to car), or, as we have in my town, a specific block (usually in a wealthier part of town) really does up Halloween with elaborate decorations and tons of candy to the point where they will close the street and it essentially becomes like a festival. A street in my town does this and the entire surrounding area goes there rather than ToT in their neighborhood.
In my area, rural Idaho, Trunk or treat is more popular than trick or treating. This is where everyone in the area parks at the local church building, decorates their trunk, and hands out candy to all the kids as they go from car to car.
It’s safer for the kids, much less walking and makes it a community event.
