For years now, I’ve been watching most of the trick-or-treaters go to the house on one side of me, take one look at my house and walk right past it, and then go to the house on the other side.
I had no clue why. Maybe they were scared of my house or thought I’d give cheap candy (my house is a bit of a fixer-upper)? I completed my “curb appeal” projects; didn’t help.
Maybe they thought nobody was home? I not only have the porch light on, but also have the living room TV on, clearly visible through the (open!) front window, and it makes no difference.
Maybe they think I’m not participating (despite the clear signal of the porch light and jack-o’-lantern)? I put up a bunch of Halloween decorations this year, and it still didn’t help!
Well, I finally found out the reason, after hearing one kid scouting ahead yelling to tell his friends to skip my house: “there’s no bowl on the porch!”
…You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Yep, unlike my neighbors, who had apparently just left unattended bowls of candy on their porches, I was actually sitting there inside the house, with the bowl of candy, waiting for kids to knock or ring the doorbell before I opened the door and handed it out. You know, like how trick-or-treating is supposed to work.
This is ridiculous. Kids these days are skipping viable houses with candy because they can’t be bothered to actually knock on the damn door and say “trick or treat” to the person who answers? Residents are expected to be too lazy to answer the door, and just put out the candy without even receiving the traditional threat first? With no actual interaction with the neighbors for the kids to show off their costumes, what’s even the point‽
I finally stuck a sign on the door saying “yes, you have to knock or ring for candy!” and that helped, but even then, some kids are still skipping my house because they apparently can’t be bothered to read the sign.
Leave a bowl out with a sign that says “if the bowl is empty, please knock.” You don’t even have to fill the bowl with anything.
ONE bag of sprite per child
The last time I left a bowl on my porch, literally the first group that came took all the candy and threw the bowl into my lawn. It disincentivized from doing so again.
I did this and they stole the bowl too.
It’s a holdover from Covid. It isn’t some glaring indictment of “kids these days”. The social contract changed with Covid and will take time to go back or maybe never does.
Yeah, in my area trunk or treat is the main reason for no trick or treaters these days. It’s a very urban area, so getting a lot of candy on foot would be easy, but walking around a parking lot is way quicker. It seems to be what most parents prefer also, so I think it’s here to stay.
I loathe trunk or treat. It’s not the same as trick or treating, it’s cheating. When I was young the only way I got a bunch of candy was to run all over the neighborhood, and then run to the other neighborhoods to squeeze in more. I was out and about, acting the fool, where chicanery abounds. I’d end up at home, exhausted at the end of the night.
Today’s kids walk around a parking lot. It’s just not the same.
When we were kids halloween was the best. As an adult, there was nothing more I looked forward to than handing out candy, seeing costumes, scaring some kids with all my decorations. But now it’s all sanitized and boiled down into the something as ludicrous as walking around a parking lot asking for handouts from cars. What, are they just prepping the nations children for a life of panhandling? Joking aside, it’s just not as fun for anyone involved. I don’t want to drive somewhere and decorate the fucking trunk of my car (especially when I decorated my house already?), and the kids don’t want to walk around a parking lot!
Trunk or treat is the worst solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
It takes a lot of the magic out of it. I’m sure a bit of this is rose-colored glasses, but it was a really neat experience as a kid. The entire neighborhood was out in the streets, people got to know their neighbors, and you felt like you were part of something. These days, it feels spooky due to how empty it is besides cars.
Not my favorite. I found a neighborhood that others tend to drive to, which I think is most other people’s ideas, so it ends up getting slammed. Which imo would be sort of fun to decorate for
“Trunk or treat” LMAO
Hey everyone, this person kidnaps children.
edit: What the fuck, people? I was just poking fun at their typo.
you act like getting little kids to “trick or treat” sounds any less suspicious
I think you’re looking at it wrong. It’s likely not that kids are too lazy to knock but that your neighbors are too lazy to answer the door. The kids see everyone on the street leaving bowls out and assume that if someone on the street doesn’t have a bowl, then they’re not doing Halloween like everyone else is.
That’s sad. We only leave the bowl out during the time we are out trick or treating ourselves. All trick or treating is under fire, it seems. Have you heard of trunk-or-treat? Gah. And even people who live in safe areas will like their kids into a car and go drive to some affluent neighborhood where the decorations are fancier and full size bars are being given out. I greatly value the experience of knocking on my neighbors’ doors and it’s sad to see people discount this community building experience.
And even people who live in safe areas will like their kids into a car and go drive
Yeah, I’m annoyed about that sort of thing, too – albeit more about the car-brained laziness of parents idling a car from house to house instead of parking and walking with their kids, rather than the class issues – but that’s a different rant.
I greatly value the experience of knocking on my neighbors’ doors and it’s sad to see people discount this community building experience.
Thanks, you said what I was thinking but struggling to express.
I think maybe I’ll bring it up with my community association, to see if next year we can’t make some sort of organized effort to encourage door-answering (and communicate that renewed expectation to trick-or-treaters).
parents idling a car from house to house instead of parking and walking with their kids
And they drive like lunatics as well. Lots of them drive at high speeds in the night with kids running around and in a vehicle with poor visibility and don’t yield to pedestrians. I saw this one car last night weave through some pedestrians crossing the street. Like c’mon… this isn’t North Korea. Let them cross the street
My workplace (which isn’t a preschool, but has preschoolers) floated the idea of doing a “trunk or treat.” But my manager nixed it with the explanation that it was “cringey.”
I don’t agree with her on much, but I agree with her on that. Instead we decorated the doors in the center and had the kids practice trick-or-treating the proper way.
That’s a cool solution! I guess if trunk or treat is the only event a place can do it’s better than nothing but I’m glad to hear you got creative about supporting the old ways :)
LOL put a ginormous bowl on your porch with a sign in it that says RING BELL FOR CANDY
Candy inside. Ring at your own risk. Muah ha. Ha. Ha.
I sit on the porch with the bowl, it’s nice to see them walking around. It’s easier for both parties, and I can dress up too.
I think it’s because fewer houses are doing it, mostly. But I don’t understand skipping very decorated houses, and honestly wouldn’t leave out a bowl of candy here.
The sitting on the porch thing is traditional here now (my mom sat inside but I’m over 50 now and since being old enough to be on the treating side have always sat out with the candy and that’s more usual as far as I can tell) Though my kids always did go up and try if a light was on outside.
Maybe they are also a little more sensible too, lol - a princess last night looked in the bowl and said, nah there’s nothing I like, happy Halloween. My kids would have taken some anyway and traded it around, but it is always too much by the time they are done.
Overall I agree, they should yell TRICK OR TREAT but am glad nobody is, like egging your house if you don’t have a treat for them.
We sit on the porch and pass it out.
This year we offered candy or pickle. We went through a gallon jar of pickles!
Kirkland pickles
Me and some friends of mine went out “reverse trick or treating” tonight, we carried around a door knocking at houses and giving them candy, and doing the same for any trick or treaters, that kind of thing. We were really disappointed by how few people we saw, and a majority of the houses in the area just had bowls. It made us feel quite sad actually.
I think we were just in an older neighborhood, full of mostly empty nesters with a few younger couples. I hope anyways. There’s a part of me that’s worried that Halloween is like a dying holiday I guess, but maybe that’s just because I’ve gotten older and have a different perspective. Who knows.
Its probably a covid relic or something. Kids knock on my house when I’m not even there cause I have my own kids (and yes, I leave a bowl outside and they still knock)
That seems plausible, except that I’ve been living here since long before COVID and have been suffering a lack of trick-or-treaters the entire time.
Actually, that reminds me of another failed hypothesis: when I first moved in, the neighborhood was just starting to gentrify and was still a little rough, so at first I figured the lack of trick-or-treaters was due to the lack of families with children in the neighborhood in general. Plenty of 'em now, though.
In our neighborhood a lot of families set up a fire pit in the driveway and hang out passing out candy. It’s something we hadn’t seen before moving into our neighborhood and we love it.
Yep! One house in our neighborhood always has their grill going in the driveway, giving out hotdogs, another has cider and mini bottles. Firepits and lounge chairs, it’s so nice.
I’m glad it is this obvious from the outside. I’ve felt gaslit ny entire life living here. We’re sold this bill of goods, The American Dream, but we have to buy it on credit and it never really meets expectations.
The sad fact is its taken the general population around 50 years to wake up to the klepto-kakistocracy being forged and the only hope I have is that they’re overplaying their hands too soon while the general population still has a hope of reversing course peacefully.
Not my experience. When I’ve had no decorations, my house was mostly skipped. When I put a few out with lights on, I got plenty of knocks and rings from both little kids with parents and young teens. And when I was cooking dinner one time, a teen could smell it and asked if they could have some, LOL. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When the weather is nice like it is this year, we put a table and chairs out on our driveway and decorate it. We sit there and have a drink and pass out candy. It’s more fun than answering the door, and we end up chatting with neighbors and parents. Our next door neighbors did the same thing as us this year, and it was even more fun, as they were right next to us hanging out.
I went out with my kids and we went to a few houses actually that had lights on outside and inside, told my kids to go to the door and knock, waited a minute or so, and nothing. This was maybe half-a-dozen houses, so it’s not always a given that just knocking on the door will get results. The new “normal” is that people are either waiting outside to hand out candy or they’re leaving bowls out for kids to help themselves. Knocking on the door for trick or treating is a crapshoot and it’d be understandable why most kids will skip that. Compared to other houses, it’s more effort for potentially no reward, or, even if there is a reward, it’s the same as every other house.
Yeah, there’s always an oddly large amount of houses in my neighborhood who don’t hand out candy. They’ll have all the signals of participation: decorations, porch light on, interior light on and nothing. Especially on bad weather nights, the kids only really hit up the visibly active houses.
We usually go to the other side of the neighborhood too, where there’s greater participation (our immediate area doesn’t have a lot of kids, so not a lot of houses either). Folks probably resent us when we choose to drive due to weather, park and unleash trick or treaters. We’re not from out of neighborhood though (just don’t want to walk the extra blocks in freezing rain) and even if we were, why does it matter? I put out/hand out candy every year and don’t care who takes it. I bought it for the purpose of giving it away after all 🤷♀️. Last few years I’ve been driving to random street corners that look busy, and hand out while sitting on the trunk of my car, lol.
You are if course right and they are wrong. But it’s possible they learned this by being yelled at by some curmudgeon who sits at home with their lights on, watching TV on Halloween but screaming at anyone who dares ask for candy. And at all the houses with kids, who welcome them, the parent is out chaperoning their little tribe. Ergo bowl. I say parent because of course they’re all divorced by the time the kids are walking.
How to teach them right? Put a sign on your gatepost, not at the door, easily seen from the street. Remember, if they’re under 3rd grade they’re still learning to read, so keep it simple:
RING BELL FOR CANDY! 🎃🍫🍭🍬👻
Once they do that, you can remind them to say Trick or Treat, and/or admire their costumes.
Baby steps.
