Then don’t f-ing hand out candy if you hate it so much. Or hand out as much as you want, then quit when you’re done. Jesus Christ…
Anyway, no it’s not unethical to trick-or-treat in a different neighborhood. If the question is “Is it annoying that stepdad was being a candy snob?” then my answer is “I dunno, I guess.”
Kids come to my neighborhood from all over Tucson, and I like it. I love seeing lots of funny costumes, and I love how the streets are full of kids, as they should be.
But what I hate is the parents who for some weird reason feel it is necessary to drive the kids around. You see them drive up to the house, the kids get out, come up to the door, get some candy and go back to the car which then drives a few yards to the next house. We don’t live in a neighborhood where the houses are far apart, I don’t even think it’s less walking to go back and forth to the car than to just walk to the next house.
And what is the biggest danger to kids on Halloween? Not poison candy or sex offenders, but kids getting hit by cars driving around the neighborhood!
No it’s not unethical. When I was a kid we used to go to a friends house near school and do the daytime raids there. This was in the days of stay at home moms/one income families. Then at night I would hit my neighborhood.
My ex-house was in a rural area. No way anyone was going door to door when every house was on over an acre of property. The town would have a trunk or treat event the weekend before but it’s not the same. So everyone would go into Frenchtown. Houses close together with Victorian porches. The town embraces it and the people go all out with the decorations. There is a time limit so they don’t have to do it all night.
The neighborhood I’m in now does decent business. We give out full size bars so we are very popular.
What do you do if you don’t want your children to eat a shitload of sugar laden junk food?
I don’t think it’s unethical to go to another neighborhood, but I agree with everyone who’s said that some manners make the experience more pleasant.
The past two years, we’ve trick-or-treated in our neighborhood, which to me is a great experience: a fair number of lights on (say, every fourth or fifth house), fun decorations and lights, people sitting out on their driveways giving out candy, not too many cars or trick-or-treaters thronging.
For one of my neighbors, though, this isn’t good enough. She seems to feel that her kids are entitled to more candy. So after we do part of our neighborhood, we walk about half a mile to another neighborhood, where Halloween is a giant block party with hundreds of people filling the streets and families camped out on their lawns giving out candy and soda. I had never seen anything like it before last year. This year, my neighbor complained that the majority of kids in the block party neighborhood are getting to be teenagers, so the celebration isn’t as good. I don’t object to going to the busier area if the kids enjoy it, but the idea that we’re owed some quality of experience rubs me the wrong way.
I know you don’t believe it, but I’d be completely geeked if that many kids came by. And I’d give out the good candy, too. If I had 700 kids show up at my door, I’d have 800 pieces of candy to give out the next year. I can’t even imagine how awesome doling out that much candy would be. I’d feel like Willie Wonka!!
I love Halloween.
On point, as usual. 
We estimate from the previous year, buy enough mini bars for two each, and when it’s gone, out go the lights. I enjoy Halloween, but like most “holidays”, enough is enough.
That would make me crazy. I’d rather put $300 in my IRA or donate it to food pantries than outdoing myself with decorating - that shit gets expensive fast. And then I’d be the only house on the block not decorating, and I’d get egged and looked down on as a stick in the mud because I’d only have a bowl of candy and some construction paper bats in the window.
No wonder everyone is broke all the time.
I always used to go trick or treating with my cousins when I was a kid. I didn’t really have anywhere to go and they lived in this huge neighborhood. Plus, it was just way more fun for all of us to go together. Two of my other cousins would come too, even though they lived in a big neighborhood as well. It worked out great for everyone – we got to go together and have a blast, my dad and my two uncles took us around, and my mom and my two aunts stayed behind to pass out candy. The adults liked it because they didn’t have to do all the work by themselves.
Sure but you’d know what to expect before you moved there. If you really hate that shit, live somewhere else. I wouldn’t live in that neighborhood for anything.
I’d feel bad for you if that started happening after you moved in though. As in most cities, we have a couple of neighborhoods that go ape shit for Christmas. Around the Holidays, there are party buses that drive around to see them. Now that’s my nightmare.
Several years ago, about two miles from my house, one guy started going crazy with the decorations. Then his neighbor did and eventually the whole cul de sac next to him. Now they’re part of the party bus tour. Every year it seems that a few more houses join in. I plan to live in my house for another 30 years and one of my fears is that shit eventually metastasizes onto my block.
Just like anywhere else, houses that don’t want to participate leave their porch lights off. Apparently there are plenty of other houses in the neighborhood that go all out that it’s not a problem if someone decides not to participate. And this is a well-to-do area. If you can afford a house on that street, you ain’t hurting for money. (Which is why it’s so cool, IMHO. It’s a fun, creative way for rich people to “give back” to the community).
Is the house-egging thing for real? I’ve never witnessed this kind of activity before, nor heard of it happening to anyone. Granted, I’ve always lived in cities, where teenagery crime is more of the driveby shooting variety than vandalism. It doesn’t strike me as a realistic fear. But maybe I’ve been sheltered.
Every year we go to my brother’s house because we lived in a really dangerous area. This year we’ve moved and thought we’d trick-or-treat here, but not one person had their lights on so we drove back to brother’s house again. I figure it’s just a fun event for kids so why should it matter if it’s not your own neighborhood. I never even considered the idea that it would be possibly unethical until this thread.
Excellent question in a country widely seen as the world’s Type II diabetes capital. Not sure that giving out full size candy bars helps, I must say.
This year I suggested to one of Celtling’s friends parents that we get the girls together for trick-or-treating. She proceeded to give me directions to the high-income area they always go to, and listed the other families who go there with them. None of these people are from ghetto areas - they all have homes in the $3-800k range.
I was shocked and uncomfortable, but unwilling to let Celtling go out with only her Mom for company, so went along with it. It turned out the neighborhood seemed to invite this, with every household fully and creatively decorated. The homeowners were all out on their porches in full dress and rocking chairs just handing out candy all night. Most of them had extreme decorations and machinery going.
I really felt we were missing out on the neighborhood camaraderie that trick-or-treating usually promotes though. I was hoping to get home in time to do our block at least, but it was after 9:00 so I nixed it.
Never again.
I wouldn’t say it’s unethical. For kids who live in underprivileged areas, it’s nice that their parents would make the effort to take them somewhere they can go trick or treating. For kids who don’t live in underprivileged areas, it does seem kinda lazy (I mean, if you’re going to target the good spots, the kid should work for it, or something like that), but I know nothing about why they’re being driven into the neighborhood, so it’s hard to judge.
I couldn’t see doing that with my kids unless we were meeting up with friends of theirs to trick or treat.
Buy some toys and let the child use the candy like currency, to “buy” the toys from you.
Celtling is not big in candy in general, and hates chocolate in particular. I buy candy she likes, and trade for her chocolate. She never finishes it all though, and seldom eats more than one piece at a time.
Before moving back to my hometown a couple of years ago, we lived in homes without much trick or treat potential (busy highway, apartment with lots of young singles and couples, that sort of thing.) My aunt and a close friend of mine both lived in a nearby neighborhood that did the big Halloween thing, and (at their invitations,) we’d drive over, park at my aunt’s house, walk around the 'hood, and end with a late supper at my friend’s. The coolest thing, to me, was the neighbor who hitched a wagon to his small tractor for a hayride/shuttle for over-tired wee ghosties.Even in that neighborhood, the residents who didn’t want to participate just turned off the porch lights. No egging or TPing, kids just walked past to the next house. I knew at least half a dozen residents there, and none complained about vandalism, even when they didn’t hand out candy.
Presumably the parents will be supervising the stash once they get home, right?* They can just split a full-sized candy bar in half and dole it out over two days. Or give the kid half and eat the other half themselves. Or tell the kid, “Sorry, honey. You can have all the fun-sized bars, but the full sized ones are Mommy’s since ya’ll didn’t pony up for gas money like I asked.”
I’m not impressed with full-sized candy bars either. But it’s not an intractable problem for a parent with half a brain.
*My parents trusted us to self-monitor our own candy-eating. But something tells me the parenting manual doesn’t recommend this kind of hands-off approach.
Strikes me as different in your case because your aunt lived there and you knew several residents. My ex-wife’s husband knows no one (I guess I don’t know this for a fact, but it would shock me if it weren’t the case) in the neighbourhood he favours for trick-or-treating.
I hear this so commonly, I start to wonder if my sister and I, and my older kids, are abnormal or just the “silent majority”. For all of us, Halloween (and Easter) involved gorging on chocolate until we were at least borderline sick. Then doing it again the next day and for a couple weeks until it was all gone.
When my kids were young, not many people gave out candy in the neighborhood we lived in, so we would go over to a nearby subdivision that had lots of kids and lots of houses that gave out candy. Ironically, I ended up buying a house in that very subdivision. Sixteen years later, I’m one of the few houses in this neighborhood that goes waaay overboard on the Halloween decorations, and gives out tons of the “good” candy. I guess I’m paying it forward on the trick or treaters.
I honestly don’t mind that kids come over from other neighborhoods. Seeing the little ones enjoy the experience is what Halloween is all about…no matter where they happen to live.