One week out from Halloween, 2023, I offer the following observations - and hope they aren't as true everywhere, as they our in my little corner of the world.
Halloween just ain't what it used to be!
For most Halloweens in the 21st Century, there's been a steady decline, and a trickling to almost nothing, in the number of trick-or-treaters 'round here! It's been particularly so since 2020 and COVID, when I was forced to put this sign upon my door.
Over the course of the entire day only ONE GROUP of three girls rang the doorbell, to whom were doled-out a small portion of the underutilized candy! That doling being exclusive of Snickers and Twix, the clear choice of "Averi and Cici's favorite Yeh-Yeh" (that's still me) to be eaten over time.
Esther said there was another ring that went unanswered because I was upstairs offloading the soggy contents of the washing machine to the clothes dryer and didn't hear it. If so, I feel bad, but my point remains unchanged!
That being... Kids just don't trick-or-treat anymore.
I guess it's just another sign of the unpleasant world we now live in! (And, say... didn't I begin my last post with that exact same sentence?)
The fear, suspicion, and outright distrust that has gripped our society during the period of 9-11 through the more recent near-decade of toxic politics, post-COVID adjustments, and new wars springing up in what we'd finally begun to regard as reasonably "stable" areas of the world (pretty much this whole damned 21st Century) have, if not outright killed this fun tradition, at least sent it into what looks to be a long hibernation!
Trick-or-treating is well on its way toward becoming as antiquated and insignificant an activity as... oh, say... giving someone a hotfoot - but without the required matches and resultant foot pain!
The saving grace to this is that it looks to be ONLY trick-or-treating that is receding into life's great rearview mirror - NOT Halloween itself, which continues to be celebrated in the form of parties, both in schools and private homes, where children can wear their costumes and get candy from persons they know and trust. ...That MAY actually be a good thing!
Spooky decorations still abound in our community, though I am personally loathe to decorate the outside of my house for any season or occasion - the work (only to be undone so soon that it's not worth it) and an aversion to any outdoor efforts in the late fall and winter months are prime factors.
Still I enjoy and am happy for the (oft-overdone, but nice) decor of others. Alas, such houses vastly outnumber the actual trick-or-treaters visiting them.
Averi and Cici, who live in a town just south of us, did have a great time trick-or-treating - and, by accounts, there seemed to be an overall higher level of activity but contained to a very small and specific area.
No, that's not THEIR house behind them!
Nor is that one - but no lack of creativity here! That's for sure!
Though, while far from finished, I can't help but wonder if trick-or-treating isn't something a number of today's kids do simply because they see it on TV! ...More than they do in real-life!
21 comments:
I think that the state of trick-or-treating in the USA today is hugely neighborhood-dependent. I have the good fortune to live on a dead-end street near the center of town, and I get several dozen trick-or-treaters. (I always plan to keep a count, but then they arrive in bunches and I have to let them all choose their comic books and I invariably lose track!) This is just about a perfect number, from my POV. A friend who lives on a corner in a nearby small city reports that they got no trick-or-treaters; kids T-or-T the block ending at the side of their house, but not the busier street their house fronts on. Meanwhile, she knows someone in a different neighborhood who gave out 1200 pieces of candy! Another turned off their lights after giving out 300 pieces of candy. Obviously those are neighborhoods where kids are brought in in carloads to T-or-T because their own neighborhood is not conducive to the activity. Not safe, no sidewalks, too much traffic, houses too far apart, or just stingy adults.
As usual, the trick-or-treaters who came to my house were all quite happy to get comics rather than candy. For this year I had plenty of giveaway comics, mostly the ashcans produced for Halloween ComicFest in previous years--sold in packs of 25, intended as treats. This year again, as since the pandemic, there were no new Halloween ashcans produced. The ComicFest webpage claims they'll make them again next year, and I very much hope that is true. There were a bunch of full-size giveaway comics in the stores this year for Halloween, but those aren't sold in packs, and most of them are rated teen and above, making them unsuitable as treats for most of the goblins. I was able to get a bunch of the (Disney) Marvel Junior full-size giveaway comics to supplement my treats: "Spidey and His Amazing Friends." Suitable for 4-to-7-year-olds. The first page tells you how to read comics! "The pointer or tail at the end of the balloon shows who is speaking."
Elaine:
I knew I could count on you for some “Halloween-plus-one-week” cheer! If only some lady gave out comics when I was a kid!
I must agree on the activity level being “neighborhood-dependent” with all the factors you mention coming into play. But that can’t fully be the reason for as much of the decline as I observe year-after-recent-year.
While we were never inundated by any stretch, pre-COVID Halloweens operated at expected levels. Flurries of kids (with and without parents) mostly in the afterschool hours until shortly after dark. But, starting in 2020, that all went away. Yet, where Averi and Cici live (a 12-15-minute drive) it appears to be not unlike our pre-COVID activity.
I feel that COVID, and all the non-medical ills that followed in its wake, resulted in people becoming more isolated and insular, with Halloween becoming a most-notable barometer of the situation.
Another factor I could feel taking hold even *before* COVID was social media and its seductive online addiction! Certainly so when it came to the “older kids”. I don’t necessarily regard that as a “Bad Thing”, because the level of what some might call “pranks” and I call “vandalism” perpetrated by those “older kids” has dropped to ZERO – whereas, in the ‘90s two of my neighbors and I used to sit outside our houses as self-styled “vandal vigilantes”! “Get Off Our Lawn” on steroids!
…Yes, really! It WAS that bad, but now it’s gone! Why shaving-cream a car, or toilet-paper a house, when you can stay home and cyber-bully your classmates or make random threats while cowardly hiding behind some made-up screen-name? While we might have traded a “small evil” for a “much larger evil” (in social terms, anyway), at least my house and car remain unaffected. …And they continue to “Stay Off My Lawn!”
Recalling our exchanges over the years, my impression was that your area always had a higher level of Halloween participation than mine. Would you say it’s returned to what it was pre-COVID, or proportionally dwindled somewhat?
The number of trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood has returned to pre-Covid levels. Twenty years ago there were considerably more, but that was due to the fact that one household on my block put on a Halloween skit inside their decorated house (first floor plus lawn), a different skit every year, and people would come from elsewhere to see the skit (repeated many times through the evening) and then their kids would trick-or-treat the street. The couple in question stopped doing the skits about twelve years ago, when they could no longer talk their friends into doing all the rehearsing and performing!
Elaine:
Then you just proved your point (…and my “adopted point”) that it is, and probably always has been, “neighborhood-dependent”!
I can’t provide any pre-COVID data on Averi and Cici’s neighborhood because Averi didn’t live there at the time, and Cici was born *during* COVID! But, I’d imagine it checks.
And there’s a perfectly understandable reason for your block’s decline from twenty years ago, so that seems to have it all covered between your locale and mine! Anyone else wanna chime in?
We had maybe three trick-or-treating groups of kids come to our door, so we didn’t give out much candy. A few Reese’s Peanut Butter Bats got confused and flew into my mouth instead of the treat bags of the visiting children (but that wasn’t so terrible). A few of the homes on our street seemed to be having parties for the little mooching microbes, so the Space Kiddettes in our area got to have their fun and I got to watch “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” mostly uninterrupted, so everyone wins there.
Win-Win to be sure, Deb! …Except maybe for those poor confused Reese’s Peanut Butter Bats!
And it supports the growing “party alternative” theory as a contributing factor to the decline. Makes sense as I’d prefer Averi and Cici to be among people they know and (presumably) trust, rather than strangers.
…Though they had both parties AND traditional trick-or-treating, so win-win for them too!
Years ago, people lived in the same neighborhoods year after year, so even if you didn't exactly "know" your neighbors, you sort of did "know" them because they were the same people who had been there all along. The mobilization of our society has contributed greatly to this breaking-down of trust in neighborhoods, because these days people often don't stay in one place long enough to put down roots. There was also a "family feeling" in neighborhoods back in the day. People looking out for each other's kids, and that sort of thing. You didn't have to know people well to feel somewhat safe and secure. Simpler times!
I, too, would have loved getting comic books for trick or treat! What a novel idea, and brava to Elaine for coming up with it!
By the way, that was a GREAT Pink Panther cover!
Ah, but one of the reasons I argue for hosting trick-or-treaters (if they do appear in your neighborhood!) is precisely because it does give children the opportunity to interact with strangers, and to find out that most of the strangers "out there" want to do something nice for them just because they're kids. American kids nowadays have so little opportunity to meet adults who aren't on their parents' schedule for them, and they are so often appropriately warned about strangers encountered when they're not with their parents, that I think it's important for them to have this ritual chance to encounter strangers in a safe way and get fun and goodies from them. I think it can give them a sense of community with folks in the neighborhood, or at least in the city/town, if not in their own immediate neighborhood. We all, maybe children in particular, need more sense of community these days.
Oof shoulda come to my street -- we get HUNDREDS of kids now. In the old days I used to hand out multiple bags of candy. TRhe one year I decided to clear out some inventory and handed out Archie Digests -- the kids LOVED them! I thought they'd get upset it wasn't candy! But now there are so many it's overwhelming so I just hide out. :(
Take a few days off and I find more comments waiting for me than I had trick-or-treaters! …That’s okay, we love comments ‘round here! Let’s get to ‘em!
Scarecrow, you write:
“Years ago, people lived in the same neighborhoods year after year, so even if you didn't exactly "know" your neighbors, you sort of did "know" them because they were the same people who had been there all along. The mobilization of our society has contributed greatly to this breaking-down of trust in neighborhoods, because these days people often don't stay in one place long enough to put down roots. There was also a "family feeling" in neighborhoods back in the day. People looking out for each other's kids, and that sort of thing. You didn't have to know people well to feel somewhat safe and secure. Simpler times!”
Yep! That’s a nice look-back at the less-sinister times of (…oh, say) the Eisenhower era – and, unlike so many other aspects of American society, that feeling of “neighborhood” largely held on through the more turbulent 1960s and 1970s that followed. But, somewhere along the line, that got lost as well.
The 1980s were probably the first time where I felt more surrounded by strangers than “neighbors” and, to varying degrees depending on the location, it’s been pretty much that way ever since. Presently, we are in a situation where we know and (mostly) like all of our immediately adjoining neighbors in each direction. …But, do I “know” any of them well enough to leave Averi and Cici with them, even for a short while? No!
Is that any reflection of their character? Also, no! It’s just that the greater levels of familiarity and trust that existed in “the good old days” do not prevail today.
Elaine, you write:
“Ah, but one of the reasons I argue for hosting trick-or-treaters (if they do appear in your neighborhood!) is precisely because it does give children the opportunity to interact with strangers, and to find out that most of the strangers "out there" want to do something nice for them just because they're kids.”
Aaaaahh, I’m not certain that I completely agree with that. My almost daily refrain (…just ask Esther) is that “the world has become a very bad place” starts kicking in to spur on my differing opinion.
Both Scarecrow’s and your lines of thought come into play… making it about both era and neighborhood specificity. Watch the news – or just look outside around you – and my “refrain” is bolstered by virtually every sight and sound.
There have always been good and bad neighborhoods and, as you know, I spent my childhood in a bad one. It was good when we moved in (not unlike what Scarecrow describes), and bad when we moved out. Over the nine years we lived there, it became increasingly dangerous, especially the schools. …Still, I went trick-or-treating (and walked all over town to find 12-cent comics)… but made sure to be home before dark. I was afraid of strangers then… with good reason. We are the sum-total of our experiences, I suppose.
There have always been “good” and “bad” people everywhere. Not that the ‘60s and ‘70s didn’t have more than their share of “bad” – they certainly did, especially in New York City – but today’s “bad” is of a more extreme and prevalent nature – and until we change, as a people and as an overall society, I fear for where this will lead us.
Finally, the most frightening aspect of this for me is the RAPIDITY with which this societal sea-change subsumed us – especially when it comes to crime! It’s almost as if COVID “flipped a switch” and all of the “good” that began in the mid-late 1980s just evaporated. Of course, too large and influential a number of malevolent “political exploiters” served to exacerbate things. I just hope it “changes back” to some degree of reasonability before Averi, Cici, and Logan achieve sufficient awareness, allowing them to enjoy that now-elusive “sense of community.” Right now, it looks as if they do – may it always be so.
JoeC:
To lighten things up a bit (…and boy do we NEED it), I wish a “nice lady next door” handed-out comics for Halloween when *I* was a kid! ...Heck, even NOW! In fact, if you lived on one side of my house, and Elaine lived on the other, my trick-or-treating would amount to a total of just a few steps! …And you’d probably each get a thank-you card from my teeth!
For many years, we had around 50 trick-or-treaters at our townhouse (unless Halloween was a weekend, when it dropped to the twenties). This year we had only 30, which was disappointing...
Until I consulted the records and saw we had 35 in 2021 and 32 in 2022. So I guess the thirties is the new normal, post-pandemic.
Shad:
By all accounts at this Blog and elsewhere, and regardless of neighborhood, trick-or-treating’s “new normal, post-pandemic” would seem to be lower overall… all varying local factors considered.
Though in your case, I wonder why weekend Halloweens would yield a considerably lower number of trick-or-treaters? My recollections were always of a higher number, given that school didn’t reduce the available trick-or-treating time.
We never figured out why we had fewer trick-or-treaters on weekends. I have guesses:
1) There are other events on Halloween weekends -- Trunk-or-treats, haunted houses, parties, etc.
2) With more time to trick-or-treat, local kids may be driven to far-off wealthy neighborhoods
But those are just guesses
Good as any, I suppose, Shad… Why not!
Just another one of those things that great minds such as ours may never divine. :-)
Kids going to parties instead of trick-'r-treating? It seems the party-pooping Duckburg Town Meeting from Barks's “Jet Witch” got their way in the end… (cf. Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #254!) An underappreciated entry among Barks's library of Halloween tales, that one, come to that. If one good things comes from this slow death of old-fashioned Halloween, let it be to drive people to reread it! It's worth it. And there are really a couple panels from it, Joe, which could have perfectly illustrated the post! It's all there, including Donald getting only a single, young trick-or-treater all night to his great puzzlement. (“Come on! Come on! I've already had several customers by this time on other Halloweens!………WHERE IS EVERYBODY?!”)
The pictures of the girls are lovely at any rate…
Over in France, trick-or-treating has never been much of a tradition (nor indeed Halloween); it only gradually made its way over in the late 20th/early 21st century, and moreso in the big cities than around here. Long story short, while I would guess numbers have declined back again since 2020, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Achille:
Now that you mention it, I couldn’t agree more on Carl Barks’ “Jet Witch”… on both its quality AND its… its… um… “underappreciatedness”! As a testament to that, I must admit that even *I* didn’t think of it when formulating this post… and I like throwing-in all kinds of illustrative stuff!
But, YES! It PERFECTLY illustrates much of what I’ve tried to say, some sixty years (!) before I did… and is a great and funny story to boot! So, thanks for bringing that up!
Thanks also for the perspective on Halloween in France. For something that virtually floods our American pop-culture zeitgeist each and every fall (trick-or-treating, costumes, decorations, candy, horror movies, TV specials, comic books… and advertising “to beat the [undead] band”) we tend to lose sight of its impact (or lack thereof) in even other western cultures – let alone the world as a whole.
…And Averi and Cici send thanks (via their favorite Yeh-Yeh) for the compliments!
Aye, much of our pop-culture is imported, of course (…Duck comics for a start), so Halloween has long been familiar as something that TV characters do — gone are the early days when Barks's “Trick or Treat” had to be awkwardly localised by the Italians as an unusually spooky Mardi Gras story to even make sense… But, like other American "things" which us Europeans know from TV, cartoons, comics, and relentless advertising campaigns, that doesn't necessarily translate to it having actually turned into a local behaviour! Most every Frenchman of our generation knows what baseball is, but I don't know anybody who's ever played it.
Yeah… I guess if you can import Disney, why not Halloween, Thanksgiving… and baseball.
Of course, and quite ironically when it comes to the Disney COMICS, it is WE who “import” them from Europe! …Stupid Americans! …But at least the “Translation and Dialogue” work is a (pretty darned poor) living! :-)
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