Halloween is overwhelmingly cutesy and fun when it comes to trick or treating. While it is a big place and everything happens, trick or treaters generally come and go in good fun from private houses without bothering anyone at all. There aren’t many tricks in trick or treating. There are occasion problems from the activities that the older people engage in like fairs and drunken parties but those types of things don’t usually visit innocent people.
We don’t get any of the older kids, except for older brothers and sisters, shepherding the little ones. They’re so cute! It’s embarrassing though, when I can’t tell what someone’s supposed to be. I don’t keep up with cartoon characters.
I drop the stuff in the bags, mini-candy bars or mini-bags, two or three, and more when it gets late.
When I was little, an elderly lady who lived in our apartment building must not have been expecting trick-or-treaters. She gave me a dried apricot. I thought it was an ear.
I live in a rougher neighborhood, so not giving the older kids anything is not an option (plus then they may just beat on the little ones down the street).
i do, however keep two bowls, one good candy, the other things like raisins and circus peanuts.
Guess what the older non-costumed ones get?
No people don’t put up with it. The police are normaly out in full force. Kids get arrested charges pressed for any damages and stern talking to’s for lesser offences. The problem is petty vadalism has become a tradition amoung teens. As many people know its hard to control the actions of teens. Gulible parents(or parents that just don’t care) think their 15+ kids are still collecting candy or something, instead the run a muck.
After I turned 13 I wasn’t allowed to leave the house without adult supervision on halloween.
My neighborhood only has about 50 houses and the number of trick-or-treaters varies by the number of families with small children. I think or “record” years were 29 kids and 6 kids. (Our 150 frontages make our neighborhood less inviting to outsiders when the next development over has well over a hundred houses on 70 foot lots.)
Especially with so few kids, the teens without costumes don’t bother me too much. I hand out 2 - 3 pieces to a customer. (Maybe one piece if the uncostumed teen is sullen.)
It has been almost ten years since I dressed up and we have a whole slew of kids who just moved in or just grew up enough to go around, so I’m going to do my scarecrow bit again: jack-o-lantern carved from the bottom over my head with a straw farmer’s hat pinned to it. Old, outworn flannel shirt and jeans with hay or straw from the barn tucked in the holes, and a pair of garden gloves. I’ll sit slumped on a chair in front of the house and silently get up to hand out candy when the kids come around. (My favorite scene was the “tough” little kid who, when I was still sitting quietly, thought I really was a scarecrow and announced that if I got up he would just karate kick me right back down–so I waited until he was right in front of me to stand up. Everyone else had a good laugh.)
I always have fun carving the jack-o-lanterns, particularly my traditional one with a large one chewing on a small one chewing on a tiny one (the last is usually a gourd).
Oh, don’t think we Americans huddle in our houses, clutching our rifles in one hand and the bag of Hershey kisses in the other as the costumed tots come up begging for candy. In most of the neighborhoods it’s a family thing, with parents cruising along in their cars as the kids run from one house to the other. Vandalism is pretty rare, at least what I’ve seen.
As as already been mentioned, we don’t do Halloween in Australia (or NZ), but every year they keep trying to make it some sort of “event” anyway.
I’m very Anti-Halloween, and any kids my fiancee and I may one day have will be absolutely verboten from participation in the whole Trick-or-Treat thing.
Your parents denied you a lot of fun for no reason, then, since that never happens. You had a much better chance of being struck by lightning.
I stopped trick-or-treating when I was around 12, so it does sort of vex me a bit to see anyone over 13 doing it. (If you NEED a bra… or, if you smoke…) But, much much more than that, I REALLY hate when people push babies in strollers for trick-or-treat. Sorry, but I highly doubt that your 9 month old can eat this peanut butter cup. One “penny size” tootsie roll is all you get.
I’ve considered toothbrushes and toothpaste samples for all the parents who push strollers.
I ALWAYS toss a “good” piece of candy to the teenagers who are carting their kid siblings around, and who remain in the background a bit, clearly not looking for any for themselves.
A neighboring town decided to hold trick-or-treat last Thursday nite. I guess that means that those kids will be coming to my town to get more. Yes, they really do that. Cheeses me off too. I guess I better find that big bag of spider rings I have in the attic.
Mrs. RickJay is going to push our baby around ina s troller this year. To be honest we don’t care what you give her, we’re just showing off our super-cute baby 
- By all means, give us the toothpaste. I like the little tubes when I go on business.
I’m all for showing off super-cute babies. But not when the baby is asleep and mom and dad are still holding out the plastic pumpkin. And when mom and dad are both getting glassy-eyed over the prospect of free chocolate. I live in a weird place. If people really wanted to just do the “look how cute” thing, I’d love that. In fact, I’d probably have some little packets of baby-type stuff to give out. But We’ve got some greedy losers here in town, who sometimes won’t even bother to put a costume on their kid.
My second bowl is all the ‘healthy’ apples, raisins, dried fruit, celery sticks, etc.
And I make it real obvious: "No costume? Here, have a treat from this bowl.
Millions for defense, but not one M&M for tribute. If someone comes to my door with no costume, they get no treat. I can understand that some older kids might be there just to escort their little siblings, which is great… But if they expect to get any candy out of it, they’d better be in costume. And I understand also that some kids might not be so well-off economically, but there are a ton of costumes you can make with little more than a used cardboard box and some construction paper. I’ve been there, done that. Lame costume? Candy. Costume I can’t recognize? Candy. But no costume at all? No candy.
By the time my family came to the US, I considered myself too old to trick-or-treat. Instead I would escort my siblings around the neighborhood wearing some makeshift costume or another - one year I dressed as a male nerd in my dad’s shirt and tie, hair slicked back, and plastic glasses with tape in the middle. Another year I just grabbed a paper grocery bag and cut eye holes out.
Now I’m the adult handing out the candy, and I notice all the kids, even the 13-year-old thugs with the rotten eggs and toilet paper in their trench coat pockets, at least make an effort to put on a mask or throw some fake blood on, if not wearing an actual costume. Everyone is handed one or two pieces until it runs out. Then the jack-o-lantern goes indoors and the porch light is turned off for the evening.
Lesee… my rules
Always chocolate. The good stuff. I don’t know who they are and I’ve forgotten where they live but my hateted burnes with the heat of a thousands suns for those folks who handed out little boxes of rasins. I don’t want any bad kid karma on that score.
And has been noted, hand it to them to avoid the greedy little ones.
And I wouldn’t refuse anyone, but those who show up without costume,and/or are just too bloody old will be given candy but treated with a leval of destain that I can only hope will wither their fragile self esteem.
No. It’s never happened to our house, and I don’t know of anyone in our neighborhood to whom it’s happened, either. Trick-or-treating has been a Sunday afternoon activity in our town for the last 30 or so years. No cover of darkness for the vandals.
Both of the houses I’ve lived in since I moved to NJ 11 years ago have had long, winding driveways (current one is 1000 ft +) and houses are not visible from the road. Zilcho on the trick or treaters. I’d love to have them, but I suspect they congregate in the various nearby subdivisions where the lighting plentiful & the driveways are short.
VCNJ~
I went to Sam’s yesterday and stocked up. Three big bags of chocolate good stuff. I like to sit in a chair in the garage with a bug bucket of candy. The little kids come around earlier in the evening, and it is just priceless to see the look on their face when I dump a whole handfull of chocolate bars into their bag. Once, one said to his little brother, "Wow, he gives out lots.’
Over half the people in our neighborhood turn out the lights and lock the doors, so I feel obligated to make up the difference. I’ve thought about costuming up, but I’m afraid I’ll scare the littler ones. I get a lot of 2-3 year-old trick-or-treaters.
If you can’t have fun passing out candy to kids, then there’s little hope for you, I say.
In my community last year, one old couple gave dimes instead of candy.
Word spread around the neighborhood. Rather late in the evening, a band of high-school boys knocked on the door demanding their dimes.
The old couple said that it was late, and trick-or-treat time was over.
So the boys stabbed the old man (or was it shot him?) and stole some valuables from the house.
He lived, but was badly injured and, I understand, is now in a nursing home for what will probably be the rest of his life.
Happy Halloween.
Any body ever pull a “Reverse” ? One year I dressed up as a bones man(can’t spell) When the kids came to the door I opened it and thrust out a bag yelled ToT! Some times the smallest ones got scarred, some middle 6 to 12 year olds, even gave me candy(they got it back) I had a young 22-25 year old mother scream but her 3year old smiled and laughed. My best holiday.
As for the older ones who beg, meh.