How big is Halloween in your neighborhood?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

  1. Yes. My wife likes to decorate for these sorts of things, so we put up orange lights and some decorations

  2. We get 50-60 kids. This year we bought salt water taffy and put it into individual bags. We have to buy candy that we don’t particularly like, especially after The Year of The Peanut Butter Cups fiasco.

  3. It’s not a huge deal. Some homeowners go way over the top with cheesy decorations and many just turn out the lights and hide in the basement.

  4. No idea.

22

So, are the kids from the apartments invited to the carnival? It sounds like not.

Anyhow, you are lucky you didn’t have your house egged. On Halloween, you can give out candy, or you can not answer the door, but chewing out kids who are prowling for candy is asking for trouble.

Do you think they have the resources to wear costumes? I complain to the older kids who don’t bother to dress up in my neighborhood, but they all DO have the resources, if they choose to bother. And after giving them grief, I give them candy. Of course, I also leave the lighted pumpkin out until the candle burns out. So if someone rings the bell at 9:30, we are still open for trick-or-treating.

23

It’s huge around here. We probably get 100 kids. The nice thing about living in a small village is that you know all of your neighbors. There is no checking the candy before eating it, and baked goods are happily given out by homeowners, and accepted by the trick-or-treaters. The worst thing is that it’s usually so fricking cold out by Halloween, the kids have to wear coats over their costumes.

24

Yes.
About 40-50.
About 2/3 of the houses participate.
Our neighbour used to do an elaborate setup, with his carport turned into a haunted cave with animatronic scary stuff all up the driveway, but they moved away a few years ago so nothing elaborate now.

You know you’re Canadian when:
#47 - You buy your kids’ Halloween costumes in a size large enough to fit over a snowsuit.

25

I don’t think they are, but then again, why should they? The thing’s subsidized by the neighborhood association, so it’s money from the homeowners going to put this thing on, not money from the apartment people. And as horrible as it sounds, I suspect that if we tried to levy the one package of hotdogs, one package of buns per family and one bag of candy fee on the apartment people, we’d have a scene, because someone would throw a fit that we didn’t let them in, or because they thought they didn’t have to pay that, or just walked on by or whatever.

They were basically screaming and yelling and being obnoxious and basically going to people’s doors and saying stuff like “Give us candy.” without costumes. They weren’t trick-or-treating, they were being assholes. We also had a baby asleep in a room that faces that part of the house (all the bedrooms do, save the master bedroom), so they were potentially waking the baby up and consigning us to a sleepless night. That’s why I yelled at them.

Probably… some of them had cell phones that they were fooling with, so I’d think some sort of rudimentary costume would have been achievable. They weren’t interested though- they were more bent on being out and obnoxious in someone else’s neighborhood.

And that’s the thing- had it been neighborhood kids, you could have figured out who they were, and ratted them out to their parents. That’s what would have happened when I was a teenager, and why we kept most of our Halloween foolery just this side of overtly disruptive, disrespectful and obnoxious.

These kids don’t even live in our neighborhood- which is a big part of the problem- there’s little recourse beyond calling the cops.

26

How big is Halloween in your neighborhood?

  1. Do you participate?

I’d like to but no one comes around

  1. If so, how many kids do you get?

Zero

  1. Is it big in your neighborhood?

I wish

  1. Does anyone do a home “haunted house” or other big Halloween setup in your neighborhood?

Nope.

Guess there is too many old people!

27

Thanks to the latest Simpsons episode, there’s a word for people like that: “Skippers.”

As for the OP:

  1. Yes, and no - see #2 for why

  2. It has been a few years since anybody has come to my door, and the most I think I have ever gotten in a year is three. The fact that it is at the far end of a row of townhouses that itself is on a steep hill has something to do with it, but the row itself has trick-or-treaters that you would think would visit the others.

  3. Probably about as “big” as anywhere else. Apparently, the local shopping center has its stores give out candy for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, then the high school has a thing where people bring their cars and give candy out of their trunks. There’s also a high school Halloween dance.

  4. Not in my neighborhood, but a few miles down the road (okay, it’s an Interstate), there’s this one house that does it up big - and Halloween is nothing compared to what they do for Christmas. (Do a YouTube search on “christmas lights glen cove” to see it.)

28

While almost all houses give out candy, we don’t get very many kids at all.

In fact, I’ll see kids on the main street a couple houses down, but not many come down our little street.

It seems rather disappointing compared to when we first moved here.

29

We always have a bowl of candy ready, but the last few years we’ve only gotten 5 or 10 kids. Here in the Bible Belt, churches have labored to co-opt Halloween in favor of their own “Fall Festivals” (“Come dressed as your fave Bible character!”)

30

  1. Good God, no. It amazes me how many parents will allow their kids to run up and ring the doorbell of a house with not so much as a light on, let alone any Halloween decor.

  2. Probably about 15-20 kids, give or take.

  3. Yes, I live in a nice middle-class subdivision so the kids virtually get bussed in from surrounding areas.

  4. Don’t think so?

31

Our neighborhood is hit or miss. We live in an area where you can walk to a couple of hundred houses without ever crossing a major street and within walking distance of one of the best elementary schools in the state. It seems like the kids who are of the age to go trick or treating tend to hit their friends’ houses. When my kids were younger we would get a few hundred… now mainly the direct neighbor kids. I’ve had to run out to re-stock candy, and also had about 20 bags left over.

We used to have lots of fun when the kids were younger and the Dads would fill a cooler with beer and put it in a wagon and pull it around as the kids made the rounds. We would be happy to give a “treat” to another Dad that happened to pass. One of the guys in our group was a Supreme Court Justice so I wasn’t too worried about getting in trouble.

The kids had pillow covers and the wagon came in handy for when the littlest kids got tired and also so the bigger kids could empty their loot and go back for more. I don’t think we had to get more candy for many months.

A few houses would go all out on the display, but my favorite was a family that had some kind of skull that the Dad could sit across the street at a bonfire and use a mic to talk to the kids coming to his porch. He could have done stand up. We would sit around the fire and laugh for quite some time (the skull also had a mic so we could hear the kids react.)

32

It’s not a big deal in Panama, and very few kids I think go door to door. Due to the American influence there are Halloween themed events in bars and discos. Sometimes there’s a “haunted house” in my neighborhood.

I live in a building with about 40 apartments. All the kids in the building - usually about 8 or 10 - come around with a couple of the parents about 8 PM. I have a few bowls of chocolates I give out.

33
  1. Used to
  2. 3-5
  3. I guess not. Not a lot of kids, houses not too close together.
  4. I used to be that guy, but not any more.

To hell with it. I’m driving my mom to Vegas and drinking. Not necessarily at the same time. Unless she falls asleep. :wink:

34

I’ve spent the years from 1969 to the present in (1) a high rise that didn’t allow trick or treating (Yay!); (2) various locations in the boonies surrounded by big dogs with big teeth, so no little rugrats at the door (Yay!); and (3) on a private dead end road, so no little gremlins about (Yay!)

Sometimes, life is good. :slight_smile:

35

In my adult life, it’s rarely been a big deal.

But as a kid growing up, it was pretty big. Our house was more or less centrally located, so we always had the neighborhood party, after which the younger kids would set out on their own, in small groups. It’s a fond memory.

36

Not that big at all. The houses are all too far apart. If you wanted to go trick or treating as a kid, you had to go into town, where houses are closer together. Since its pretty pointless, we don’t participate, and even in town, no one has a big display or anything.

37

Just moved to my neighborhood in May, so I don’t know how big it is. I think there will be some, since the condo complex has a lot of families with kids. I did a little decorating on the front porch – some “zombie biohazard” tape, and some pumpkins surrounded by plastic rats. The rats crack me up.

At my office it’s a BIG deal. Departments decorate, and people dress up. Competition is fierce; there’s a department winner and a single costume winner. Parents bring their children in to trick-or-treat. It’s majorly fun. I had a blast last year and we’re having even more fun this year with a decorating theme (“Under the Sea”). Basically, we won’t be doing anything Tuesday afternoon or, well… all day Thursday. Tuesday for decorating, Thursday for the day.

My costume last year was Abby from NCIS; people who had seen me daily for the previous year didn’t recognize me (lots of eye makeup plus a black pigtail wig plus goth clothing plus a lab coat).

This year, to go with the department’s decorating theme, I’m going to be a school of bio-luminescent jellyfish. I work with science geeks who will appreciate that.

My dad and stepmum would offer parents we knew a beer/shot/glass of wine back in the day. Everyone gratefully accepted.

The War on Halloween goes against proper Murkin beliefs and must be stopped!

38

My brother went to a church elementary school that didn’t allow kids to dress as actual Halloween costumes, they had to do the Bible character thing.

Bro wanted to be someone “bad” from the Bible, so he went as Judas. One “Biblical guy” outfit, makeup stubble, and thirty nickles.

Church was not amused at this, nor at the kid who came as Satan. I imagine they’ve become more specific in their costume rules. It was only a matter of time before someone came dressed as the snake.

39

There are quite a few expat families with young children in the accommodation area - basically, a gated community south of Luanda- that celebrates Halloween. Last year, I was asked to dress up as a headless creature and shuffle by the kids, dragging some chains behind. It was great fun until I made a couple of kids run away crying.

Hope they have me back this year :frowning:

40

Please tell me “come dressed as your fave Bible character!” was poetic license on your part, and the local churches don’t actually do that.

But it would be fund to dress a kid up as Salome with John’s head on a platter, or the prostitute of Jericho who let Joshua in.

(What do churches have against black magic and Satanism anyway?)