It always surprises me how few trick-or-treaters we get every year for Halloween.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, and some years I’ve blamed the weather. No one wants to go walking around in a costume when there is sleet falling from the sky. As a kid I would have toughed it out, but as an adult, no thank you.
My husband and I have been in our house for four years, and each year we go through not even one bag of candy. And prior to that, I lived with my parents in their current house for six years, and we had the same problem.
When I was a kid, and a teenager, I remember going to every house with a light on in our neighborhood. We went up and down every street, down the dead ends and back, until we had pillow cases full of candy. Then my friends and I would sit on the floor of one of our bedrooms and dump out the candy to trade with each other or throw out pieces that were open.
Once, one of the last years I went out, my friends and I covered as much of town as possible until the lights went out, at which point everyone was just dumping the last of the candy they were handing out into our bags. One of my friends was given an onion, which was strange, but it made us laugh.
Now, though, I notice that in my neighborhood and my parent’s neighborhood, both subdivisions, most of the kids only go up and down the main road through the subdivision. My parents live on a corner lot, where the side yard is against the main road, and they still don’t hand out a ton of candy unless they sit out near the sidewalk.
I’ve wondered about this for a long time, and the only conclusion I’ve come to is that a lot of kids participate in Trunk-or-Treats throughout the month of October and already have a lot of candy, so they might not feel the need to go to every single house in the area.
For anyone who doesn’t know, a Trunk-or-Treat is where participants (can be parents, businesses, teachers, etc.) bring their cars to a parking lot and decorate their trunks for Halloween and hand out candy from the trunks of their cars.
We didn’t have a lot of these when I was a kid, though I’m sure I would have gone if there was. I love candy, and there’s never enough of it in my opinion. But now I’m a little saddened when I still have a bowl full of it on Halloween night after trick-or-treating is over.
Plus since it’s in my house, someone has to eat it. And usually it’s not me. My husband has a far worse sweet tooth, so I usually get left with any candy that includes peppermint (which he hates) or anything with nuts (he’s allergic), and he eats the rest before I can.
Plus, I put a lot of effort into costumes, and it feels like getting all dressed up with no where to go when I’m all decked out in my costume but there’s only a handful of people that get to see it. If I’m putting on a wig or using hairspray to make my hair orange, it’s not for my own benefit.
Luckily, we have two Halloween parties this year before the holiday, so my husband and I will get a lot of use out of our costumes. This year we decided on Cosmo and Wanda, the fairies from the cartoon ‘The Fairly Odd Parents’, a cartoon that was popular when we were little and the show we named our dogs after.
And we’ll still hand out candy, despite the possible extra candy and disappointment. And this year maybe I’ll donate the extra candy so no one gets a cavity.