Trick Or Treat, Smell My Feet...

I’m not sure exactly why I own a soap box.  I mean, in this day and age, they’re not all that common or useful, but I’m glad I have one because I like to stand up tall on it and shout my opinions from up here.  For example, let me tell you how I feel about the over-commercializing of Halloween.  Pull up a chair. 

I LOVE Halloween.  Love it.  Always have, and probably always will.  What’s not to love?  Children get to tap into their imaginations and be someone else.  And then they get candy!  Even grown ups who wish to participate can be who they want for a night and they get to be a hero to a kid looking for Butterfingers or KitKats.

As though costumes and candy aren’t enough, the act of trick or treating is really about so much more.  Those imagination-fueled costumes encourage creativity and, sometimes, practical reasoning.  Packs of kids walking together from house to house incite brotherhood, cooperation and cultural awareness.  Adults opening doors with a smile on their face strengthen a neighborhood.  Knocking on the door and yelling “Trick or Treat!” fosters trust that your efforts will be rewarded.  It’s pretty perfect.

Well, it USED be pretty perfect, anyway.  Certainly, there are people whose religious beliefs keep them from celebrating.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But for the rest of us who WANT to experience it, so much of the fun has been sucked right out of it by the Paranoid Minority.  I hate that for the kids who may never experience the real thing.

First of all, Halloween is October 31^st.  Always has been and it shouldn’t matter what day of the week October 31^st happens to be, THAT is Halloween.  Communities that declare that Halloween will be celebrated on Saturday the 26^th or Friday, November 1^st because that’s more convenient for them chap my hide.  That’s right!  I said they chap my hide!  You’re allowed to say crotchety stuff like that when you’re up on a soap box.

Kids should be able to go to school, excitedly talking about their plan of attack, then come home and drive their parents nuts asking “Now?  Can we go now?  How about now?”  They should be able to go to school the next day with Now’n’laters stuck in their teeth and talk about who had the biggest haul.  That’s the way it supposed to be!

As though scheduling Halloween to suit your needs isn’t bad enough, what about all the Faux Trick or Treating?  My hide continues to be chapped.  Walking your kid through the mall so that underpaid, overly irritated retail clerks can throw SourPatch Kids in their bags while you windowshop or sit in a massage chair doesn’t count!  Likewise, there’s a new trend called “Trunk Or Treat”.

Trunk Or Treat is just what it sounds like.  People line the family car up in a parking lot, drape it in spooky-ish Halloween decorations and pass out candy from…you guessed it…the trunk of their car (or back of their minivan, more often).  The theory is that it’s a safer and more controlled environment for the kids.  These events are often hosted by churches or private schools and the very idea of them makes me squirm.

Now, in interest of hypocritical disclosure, the church around the corner hosts a Trunk Or Treat, and you can bet my little goblins will be there.  I mean, another day to dress up AND extra candy?  Score!  But it’s not the replacement for the actual holiday that I think those grown ups want it to be.  It’s just a warm up for the big game!

I do understand that Trick Or Treating the traditional way is just not possible in some communities.  When my family moved to rural Pennsylvania and I realized it was not possible to go door to door, that was a rude awakening.  I came from Baltimore, with blocks and blocks of real neighborhoods and came home with my pillowcase filled with candy, so that I could dump it out and go back out.  Sometimes people tossed coins in our bags.  Sometimes, they gave us homemade treats like cookies, cupcakes or popcorn balls. And sometimes, they invited us into their homes for a mini-haunted house…AND WE WENT!!!  Gasp!!!

Trick Or Treating in my Grandmother’s neighborhood in Illinois was equally fabulous.  Those neighbors not only gave us treats, but wanted to ask about our mother or siblings, or just see how we were doing.  We arrived at Grandma’s house only after we decided what our act for the evening would be.  You see, my grandmother took TRICK or Treat quite literally.  Children (all children, not just her relatives) were expected to enter her living room, where she and Grandpa would be seated on the couch.  She would say “All right, we’re ready to see your trick.”  Only after we told a joke or did a dance or whatever it is we worked out, did we get our treat.

Now, here in suburban Atlanta, I’m surrounded by neighborhoods that choose their Trick Or Treating night based on convenience and shopping centers with “Fall festivals” so that children don’t have to dare to knock on a door.  By some stroke of luck, however, my OWN neighborhood pulls out all the stops for a fantastic, REAL Halloween and I’m so grateful.

Neighbors install over-the-top decorations.  Grown-ups wear costumes as they walk with their kids or answer their own doors.  Children walk the neighborhood in very loosely supervised packs and we average 300 kids every year.  I love that and am proud of my neighbors for letting their kids take part in the fun and for making it fun for everyone.  There’s no fear, no suspicion.  Just giggles, joy and the occasional trickster.

Among the fairies, the vampires and the princesses, there are always random 12-13 year old boys who are way too cool/mature/uninterested in that kid stuff to put on a costume, but bold enough to ask for candy.  That’s when Grandma steps in and insists that if they couldn’t be bothered to throw together a costume, they’re going to have to earn their candy.  Until I hear a joke, see a dance, a cartwheel or something, the chocolate doesn’t find its way to their bags.  My husband feels certain that I’m setting myself up for an egging or something, but I have faith in the power of a KitKat and the hearts of pubescent boys and think they get that I’m having fun with them.

That’s what I’m going to keep doing…having fun.  As long as some parents are willing to let their kids be kids and experience some of what they either had or wished they had in their own childhoods, I’m going to hang ghosts in my yard, I’m going to give corn syrup laden goodies to anyone who knocks on my door.  I’m going to bust them when they show up twice and I’m going to give them candy anyway.  And when it’s all over, I’m going to let my kids eat junk and I’m going to snatch the Almond Joys for myself.

I ask all the kids what they’re going to be for Halloween.  Maybe I should ask the grown ups instead.  Are you going as a Kid At Heart or are you going as a Paranoid Fun Sucker?  Some advice:  the Kid gets better candy.  I’ll probably stash mine in my soapbox now that I’m stepping down from it.