My daughter is nineteen, and she was out in full costume trick-or-treating last night. I did tell her this is probably the last year she’ll be able to do this.
Yes, she is a bit underdeveloped, mentally. It’s hard for her to make the transition from being a kid to being an adult, when really she is less ready for it than her 14-year-old sister is.
I don’t know that she has ever been given a hard time during trick-or-treating, though. I would probably be fairly irritated if she was.
Ha!
Wyoming might be as backwards and conservative a place as they come, but I have literally never seen a Chick Tract or similar item in trick-or-treat bags here. The only “propaganda” in my kids’ bags yesterday was something from B.A.C.A. (Bikers Against Child Abuse) letting kids know who to contact if they are being mistreated.
We had a close neighbor that for years handed out those damned things.
Exactly! I had some very fun, awesome teenagers last night. One group of three boys around 13-15, very silly kids. Obviously having fun. One of them caught me off guard by saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Trick or Treat”. Made me laugh. I looked at the next one and said, “Happy Thanksgiving, Dude!” They all laughed.
Honestly, the teens are a lot more fun than the toddlers.
You can buy several concoctions that do this. The fireworks stores up in NH sel these:
At a craft fair in New Hampshire a couple of weks ago, I bought some home-made stuff.
If you want to make your own, you can find recipes on the internet:
We live in the middle of a city of 200,000 people in a dense neighborhood of nice middle class homes. The weather was fine. We got maybe 30 kids.
It’s really very disappointing. I love giving out candy and I love seeing the little ones in their costumes. I don’t understand what’s going on. There’s no glut of joyless evangelicals around here. Nobody has a problem with teens trick or treating - hell, I’ll hand candy to a well costumed adult, what do I care? But there’s just no kids out. It’s quite sad.
Our town’s trick or treating hours end at 7pm. I got home at 6:30. At 8:00 pm the doorbell rings and I hand out Cheetos to the 3 kids. I ate a LOT of fun-size KitKats last night. I have no problem with teens trick or treating, but they better be in costumes.
There was a joker down the road who was having an affair with a married gal. He finally went completely bonkers when she stopped seeing him and went off his nut and started preaching and making home-made Chick Tracts.
Gave them out for Halloween.
They finally hauled him off. Either jail or the looney-bin. Not sure which…
150 plus. Great costume s this year.
In the end of a upper-middle-class suburb. Over 50, five bags of treats given out, they came in packs, so we gave up counting.
Some very cute younger kids, and some kids probably too old for TorT. But as long as they wear a costume and get into the spirit, that’s OK by me.
The difference is- really little kids get a small handful. Slightly larger get to grab themselves.
High schoolers get only 1 or 2 items.
We scared a few, even!
We had about 120 last night. That’s about half what it was a few years ago. A good number of teenagers, too. I give them extra, because they’re staying out of trouble.
Many of the local churches have Halloween activities in their parking lots or meeting halls. Members give out candy and there’s carnival-type games to play. Usually some Christian-themed trinkets, stuff like glow-sticks with printed-on Bible verses. They’re a big draw (less walking, more things to do) and probably why some areas have decreased door-to-door walkers.
I scared a few too-- mostly by opening the door before they rang the doorbell.
I’d guess 80 or so-- including one kid dressed as a fidget spinner-- complete with LEDs.
We ended up with more candy leftover than given out-- we got as many visitors as usual (more or less-- no one here cares to count), but the person buying candy bought twice as much as “usual” and the person doing the giving out was mostly fairly stingy.
The funniest child-- an older child or young teen said “Thank You” and turned away despite not getting candy. He was sharing a bag with his buddy/brother. I was amused-- I’d have happily handed him a piece and let him put it in the buddy’s bag. But I guess collecting lots of candy wasn’t the point.
I was a little unimpressed by how many cars stopped in the road near our house-- my assumption was less people driving in from other neighborhoods, and more lazy people (parents who don’t want their precious darlings to walk too far in the cold).
The weather was great here. We had about 20-25 kids at my house. That feels like a little less than last year but I don’t keep records and my memory is terrible.
Rushgeekgirl, I’m sorry your daughter was treated so badly. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who is polite and who enjoys Halloween enough to go trick-or-treating gets can get candy at my house. I have better things to do with my energy than judge people who want to enjoy a silly holiday. Sure, I’d appreciate seeing a nice costume, but not every kid has the time, money, or creativity to pull one together.
This happened to me too. One father had to reassure his kids that it was okay to take two pieces when I told them to take more. By the end, I was just shoveling handfuls of candy into kids’ bags because I don’t need all the leftovers.
If teenagers want to have fun trick-or-treating, they are welcome at my house. The few teenagers we had last year were all fun. They all tried to dress up at least a little, they were nice, and they weren’t causing any trouble. Encouraging them to trick or treat is better than telling them they are too old and perhaps accidentally convincing them that they should be out pulling pranks and wreaking havoc. We didn’t see any teens this year though.
Not every kid has the time or money. Some teens might think their friends have all outgrown it and then get recruited to go out at the last minute. I don’t care if they come to my house without a costume.
Also, as a pragmatic matter, I’m not going to say no to a teenager who can’t be bothered to dress up but who knows where I live and has the capacity to screw with me.
We put two big bags of candy in an honor system bowl before going out with our kids, and there were a few pieces left when we got back. Our kids came away with a major haul from the neighborhood, however. That’s in addition to the trunk-or-treat from the church where they go to preschool. Fortunately they’re young enough that they won’t notice how much slowly goes missing as I eat from their stash in weeks to come.
When we were out with them, they hit one house with a bowl outside at the same time as some other kids, and there was one girl in the other group who made a point of grabbing all six pieces left in that bowl and then announcing to everyone else that there was none left. That group showed up at our door right after we got back, and that same girl tried to sweep up everything we had left, but my wife made her share with her younger siblings. Some kids get a little too into this.
There was also a father in a car trailing his kids down one street, as a mobile home base. It was insanely irritating to have to worry about this car constantly creeping down the road in fits and starts while all the little neighborhood kids are flitting back and forth.
38 customers, trending downward the last few years after trending up for a few.
Probably a third of them were SUV’d in from elsewhere (which causes great botheration to some of my neighbors).
mmm
I live on a two block street between two main streets. Nobody ever comes.
And in my town, the businesses and stores on the local main street give out candy, so most people go trick or treating there.
Live on the middle of the street in an entry-level (for buying) neighborhood in a Midwest suburb of around 20k. Spent $24 in assorted bags of candy and left it for my wife as I work a night job. Had a few tootsie rolls left.
As far as teens and costumes go, I just let anyone have candy. When I was 12 I was told by several that I was way too old to go trick or treating, and I was a very young looking 12 year-old - maybe 5’ even and a little pudgy with a baby face. I mostly went to take my little brother anyway. Never went after that.
A couple dozen maybe, give or take.
I had at least 2 groups of teens, at least 15-16 years old, who had a parent waiting for them on the sidewalk. Not with little siblings either. Strange.
Last year, or possibly the year before that, I noted there were a lot of parents driving their kids from house to house. The neighborhood Halloween participation is pretty spotty (the vast majority of the neighborhood residents are Hispanic, primarily Mexican and Salvadoran, a lot of them fairly recent immigrants or illegals), so I try not to get too judgy about it. Anyways, there was a lot less of that this year, but there were still a few. This year was the most I’ve seen on foot 'round here.
Didn’t end up with too much candy leftover though, because I was giving out full handfuls most of the night, and the last few trick or treaters got double fistfuls. I think our house got a good reputation because our first year here we ran out of candy early and I ended up giving out full-size Hershey bars that we had bought for something else and never used.
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For years I was the only one on my block giving out candy, The elderly neighbors turn off their lights and hide and the ones with kids go somewhere else. So I always get plenty of candy to reward those who venture down the dark street to my porch light. But this year, two neighbors had elaborate decorations set up including fire pits and lights. I noticed a lot of cars stopping by their houses but only a couple kids walked the few houses down to me. I had maybe 10 kids in all including a couple teenage boys who were wearing masks but said nothing to me. I started to give them a sarcastic “can’t even say ‘trick or treat?’” but they were big boys and I thought better of it. I brought all the leftover candy to work.