Last night, I was talking to some neighborhood kids who were out trick-or-treating. They are from my neighborhood, so I wasn’t surprised to see them out. Then one of them said “When we’re done here, we’re going to go to Frostburg, and then to Bel Air”. Well, trick-or-treating hours were from 5:30 to 9PM, so there was plenty of time to hit more than one neighborhood. But I have this vague feeling that neighborhood hopping is wrong. Perhaps because it places an unfair burden on the adults actually buying the candy. I don’t mind supplying the kids in my neighborhood with candy, but I don’t think it’s fair to have to provide kids from other neighborhoods with candy, too.
Kids from the rural areas, who have no “neighborhood” to speak of should certainly feel free to go to the nearest neighborhood and trick-or-treat there.
So, how do you all feel about the neighborhood hopping? Am I perhaps taking it too seriously? (I do that sometimes).
I say go where the candy is!!! If you know a certain neighborhood tends to give out the good stuff, why NOT go there? Why should you stick to your neighborhood, where people’s idea of good candy is those disgusting taffy thingies that come wrapped in orange and black paper?
That’s just me.
Trick or treating is dying where I live. Every year they pick an “official” day and the hours are from 6:30 to 8. An hour and a half? That’s not enough time, IMHO, to get a really good candy stash. (I agree there should be a cutoff time, though.)
This is why church parties are getting more and more popular around here: one stop shopping for enough candy till Thanksgiving.
I think neighborhood hopping is okay, based on two thoughts:
In some neighborhoods, people just don’t have enough money to give out candy. Any kids in these places are going to be screwed out of a priceless tradition because the people that live near them are broke.
And giving out candy is completely voluntary. Nobody will think less of you if you keep your porch light out and hide in the back room. If for whatever reason you don’t want to provide kids with candy, or you can’t handle the volume, or whatever, you’ve got an out. What there isn’t is a way to provide some kids with candy while leaving others in the cold.
I’m all for neighborhood hopping - our neighborhood, the neighborhood we border because it’s kinda still the same neighborhood (kids go to the same school), Grandma & Grandpa’s neighborhood. Plus, our particular neighborhood is fairly “well-off” for the general area, so we get a lot of kids from nearby areas that aren’t quite so. It’s a nice pat-ourselves-on-the-backs feeling to see little ones who aren’t quite as spoiled as ours - they get more excited, give bigger smiles and louder thank-yous.
Here they just goes trick-or-treating around the ‘posh’ areas, because they tend to have more money and less kids. Lack of kids means lack of sweets, which means they give the trick-or-treaters money!!
I know what Snoopy Fan means by “official day”. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Baltimore, it was always on Halloween itself, but around here, they’ll rearrange it to be on a Friday or Saturday night. We had trick-or-treating here on Oct. 31st this year, just because it happened to fall on a Friday, but on years when it’s in the middle of the week, we have trick-or-treating the Friday or Saturday before or after. I’ve always liked the years it was the weekend after, because then you can wait til after Halloween to buy your candy, and it’s already on sale.
I don’t mind the neighborhood hopping, but I’m with G-RAY–park your car, fer chrissakes! I saw so many people out driving their kids from house to house! What’s up with that? We hit the road with the kids for two hours last night–you want the candy, you have to put in the leg work yourselves (mom gets a 5% cut, of course because I supply costumes and curbside protection ).
I totally agree! But in cases where there are a lot of stairs up to the front door (happens a lot here, because this is a very hilly area), I’m content to just stand on the sidewalk and watch the kids go up!
I became a halloween scrooge when they started bringing the kids to the neighborhood in car-loads. When I was young, you went to all the local neighbors, they tried to guess who you were and you got a treat.
What about border hopping? When I was living in New Mexico, every Halloween there was always a TV news story about kids in Mexico who would wade across the Rio Grande and go trick-or-treating in El Paso. Apparently, American halloween candy was considered a better prize than the Chicklets given out on Dia de los Muertos south of the border.
When I was little, I never went around my “neighborhood”, which, quite frankly, wasn’t a “neighborhood” at all-there weren’t that many people around us. We lived in a town house in an old mansion on a big main road, and the houses were too far apart for much trick or treating.
So my parents took us to my cousins’, where they live in a huge plan. I’d go with my cousins, Tina, Craig and Josh, and our cousin Marc would come with us too, even though he too lived in a plan and could have gone around there. My dad and my uncles would take us around while my mom and my aunts gave out candy. We always had a BLAST!
When I was 11, we were in the house we are now, and I went around with my friends in this neighborhood for two years, but it wasn’t as much fun. So I went back to my cousin’s for one year, and then the last year I went (when I was fifteen), I went around with my best friend and her sister and her friend in their neighborhood.
It makes me feel all old and no-fun to admit it, but I agree with Khadaji in frowning on neighborhood hopping. There is just something so “gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more” about it that rubs me the wrong way.
WHERE G-Ray??? WHERE??? Not all neighborhoods have parking!!!
As to do I mind neighborhood hoppers? Not at all, as I explained in G-Rays “don’t drive and trick r treat” thread, I live in a huge sprawling subdivision (with NO parking, like most of the neighborhoods in our town).
A lot of people go to “Trick or Treat Town” a major production put on by some of our local utility companies, also most of the malls in our area have trick or treating.
At any rate, because of these other events, the houses in any given neighborhood, that give out candy tend to be somewhat few and far between.
I always buy lots of candy, and hope for the best but sometimes we don’t get many trick or treaters down our way (we live at the end of the subdivision). So no, I don’t mind hoppers!!
We lived for 11 years in an extremely popular once-a-year tourist destination…a house on a certain block on the south side of our small city. This street got hordes of trickortreaters from distant, more suburban areas each Halloween.
A succession of massive minivans would pull up at one end of the street and disgorge approximately 34 goblins, pirates, Power Rangers, prima ballerinas, princess angel brides, pumpkins, and people with nametags that read “Hello/My Name Is God.” These people would then make their way up one side of the block, ravaging the households of their candy like a plague of locusts, and repeat on the other side just as more minivans pulled in.
Did it bother me? Not particularly. We were prepared with extra candy, and we felt no compunction about turning off the light when it was gone, even if that was still pretty early. The one thing I’d say is that it’s nice to wait until the neighborhood kids have had a chance to do their own block. Given a choice, I’d rather give out my candy to the little Pokemons down the end of the street than to the Harry Potters I don’t even know and will not see again till next year. But that aside, I don’t have a problem with it.
BTW: We moved about 3/4 of a mile last year, and for whatever reason–busier street, more spread-out houses, smaller front porch, goodness knows–the number of trickortreaters here is considerably smaller compared to what were used to. IOW, we are no longer a tourist destination. Ah well!
As a dispenser of candy, my rule has been to give out stuff to anyone who shows up on my doorstep. Costume or no, young or old, you’re there, you get the sweets. I may rescind that policy if it gets abused, but for now I’m happy with it because IMO that’s what Halloween is about.
As a trick-or-treater (or, at least, the parental escort of a trick-or-treater), my rule is you can raid any place that you can walk to on foot. Driving to “foreign” neighborhoods just seems so wrong, turning a fun little holiday into an opportunity to exploit.
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