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Trick or Treat, at the Mall
This seems like a new trend, or am I just woefully behind? A friend of mine signed off a text this afternoon by telling me he was heading to the mall with his kids to Trick or Treat.
The mall? The shopping mall?
Apparently, it’s a thing: here, and here, and here. And probably other places, too — I just listed the first three results when I Googled “trick or treat at the mall.”
The keyword here, from my investigation, is safety. Which just seems so lame to me. I know, I know, Halloween is dangerous and dark and kids get hit by cars. But surely there are better solutions than wandering around a mall, going up to the Cinnabon or the Bodyshop or Limited Express asking for candy.
Why bother to do it at all, if it’s so perilous that the only option is to do it at Nordstrom Rack?
Another sign of a country in decline. I don’t care if Trump makes America great again. Just make us a little less obsessed with safety. “Fewer Stupid Freak Outs” is a winning campaign slogan, to me, anyway.
Published in General
Well, I live in a small midwestern town, and in addition to regular door-to-door stuff on Halloween tonight, we also have the downtown businesses doing a trick or treat deal yesterday afternoon. It’s really just a bit of fun for everyone, and building up general goodwill for the local shops. Been doing this for years.
Me, I turn out the lights and hide in the back room on my computer.
The school I teach at and the church I attend here in Henderson did both have trunk-or-treats this past week. My wife and I did purchase a couple of bags of candy to hand out, but so far this evening we’ve only had 3 or 4 kids come trick-or-treating. I did take my 2-year old daughter trick-or-treating around our apartment complex earlier this evening. We found around 7 or 8 apartments passing out candy. Not a lot given the number of apartments in our complex, but, given the small number of trick-or-treaters around here, they were all happy to give my fairy princess plenty of candy. And it was my first time as a dad taking my child out on a genuine Halloween trick-or-treating walk, so that was fun.
I do dream of a day when I’ll live in a neighborhood where old school Halloween trick-or-treating is still popular.
Happy Halloween!
Well, my wife is recovering from knee surgery, so she’s kind of stuck sitting, so I took the kids around the neighborhood tonight — actually more like followed behind them while they ran from door to door — and she sat in a back room reading.
I had even bought candy to hand out, too, but now I’m stuck with it. Whatever shall I do?
Anyway, Knotwise, ours is the “old fashioned trick-or-treating neighborhood” you speak of. It’s great. Lots of people out and about tonight. Friendly people everywhere. Much fun to be had, albeit the temperature did drop pretty rapidly around 6:00 pm, and I was ready to go home. So I did. The kids did one last block on their own, then came home and watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” (Last year our post-candy-gathering movie was “Arsenic and Old Lace,” which was perfect.)
She is as cute as she can be, and you have every right to have such joy.
This made me laugh. I can just see kids giving a shopkeeper dirty looks after getting a coupon that says “Buy 2 towels, get the third one free.”
Halloween trick or treating is one of the few times I talk to neighbors with little kids. They stand there behind the passel of little ones and I find it is easy to strike up a conversation. We exchange first names, I tell them their kids look great, we chat about the weather and the world feels like a bit better place for everyone, if only for a moment.
I remember taking my little ones and always enjoying the folks who made a point to talk to the kids, asked them if they were having fun and such. I got to do it with my grandchildren when their mom or dad was at war and keeping the tradition alive meant even more.
I can understand the mall thing as an extra event, but the community loses something when we remove a tradition that makes strangers talk to each other.
Here in “super zip code” coy outside of DC, Halloween has not been taken over. The town square area closes the main road and the merchants hand out candy while the kids walk around an d go to a lame little haunted house. Then they storm the neighborhoods trick or treating. Lots of walking, lots of parents laughing (possibly imbibing, I don”t check their cups), reminds me of my Halloweens growing up.
This is a more polite way of describing what really is vengeance.
Those were the days….like the costume parade through Brookline where I grew up…favorite costume a witch with boiling cauldrons on my cape and Casper…we stayed out til our greedy pillow cases were full – and turned over some trash cans and toilet papered a few places on the way…..Tradition is fierce is the ‘Burgh.
Too cute! Keeping the fun going!
the only scary part this year was getting the kids across the road with all the traffic.
Did my usual rounds with the kids. First, our street and all our neighbours which give us a chance to introduce ourselves to those strangers we see driving by all year.
Then to the starter home neighbourhood in the next block (the ones with all those small kids). Good Halloween house density there (about 40% these days).
No snow this year. About 12 degrees C. Check for blue lips every 10 minutes and herd them home before hypothermia sets in.
Another successful Halloween!
Why does this seem so appropriate from a guy whose profile pic is John Cleese?
Alright parents–and I am soon to be one in March–it’s time to have a revolt. We must proudly and blatantly disobey the social pressure to be helicopter parents. If you are not letting your kids walk up and down the neighborhood on Halloween, then you are succumbing to the stupid Leftist desire of total control, uniformity through mediocrity, and fear. Get out there. Live that Charlie Brown life. Let your kids remember what it was like for us during “The Wonder Years.”
I loved trick or treating when we lived in town (well, a town with a few more people…) —loved going out with the small fry, saying hi to the neighbors, helping the local cops keep the streets safer from whatever threats might lurk, seeing the kids in their costumes especially the ones they’ve created themselves. Now that we’re rural, we don’t see any trick or treaters, so it’s a treat to see the pictures of your little person and that familiar, gleeful smile…thank you!
We are “colonizing” a neighborhood near downtown where too many homes became derelict, or rentals with no spirit of continuity. Last year, we got only two kids during the whole night of waiting. Last night? A big goose egg! I really want kids to leave the Mall-O-Weens and Trunk Or Treats and get back to the streets. We decorate, of course, including our headstone in the front yard with a babydoll trying to climb up out of it. Might have to rethink that one. This year, we added Junk-O-Lanterns:
But no kids. We’ll get ’em next year!
When I owned my own house in Sacramento, I had organized a Neighborhood watch group within a 4 block radius. Our neighbors were about equally divided as to elderly, middle age and young parents. We also had a few meth and drug dealers. It took us about 6 months to get rid of them. I also organized a “Safe Place” refuge for children walking home from school. If they were frightened for any reason they could go to a house with the yellow sign in their front window. It made our neighborhood popular on Halloween, as the children would stop at the houses with the yellow safe signs.
http://nationalsafeplace.org/
“Iran with nukes” is something I’d trick or treat at the mall for.
I do remember that! And I also remember my parents giving my candy haul the most cursory once-over possible. I say, more kids need to be experimenting with Pop Rocks and Coke.
The kid dressed as a cop made me frightened and unsafe. He should have been preceded by a trigger warning.
Random thoughts:
Starting at age 1 I took my God Daughter trick or treating every year until she was 13. It was our thing. She got as much fun out of decorating me as she did out of getting candy.
In the early 80-‘s I ran a Radio Shack in a mall. They had Trick-or-Treating in the mall way back then.
61 kids came by for candy last night. We’re a neighborhood in a fairly rural area. Lot’s of kids trucked in. One group had about 25 kids.
In the small town nearby, the RV dealer always hosts Halloween for kids. He lines up the RVs and local businesses sponsor each one giving out candy. They had 1600 kids there last night. Remember, it’s rural here. They came from miles away.
I have a ton of candy left over. Going with me to work tomorrow. I certainly don’t need to eat it all.
I learned this year that porch lights that turn on by sensor aren’t very inviting to trick-or-treaters, even if the door is open.
The mention of knee surgery makes me wonder if trick-or-treating is common in hospitals. Kids bring in all sorts of germs and chaos, so maybe it’s not the best idea… but I’m sure many patients would appreciate a visit from a bunch of cheerful monsters and princesses.
My niece went around a hospital giving hugs once. The patients loved it.
My older son was in a hospital based daycare that served many medically fragile children for just over a year after he was born. The invited the parents and and we all took the kids trick or treating through the hospital..with their feeding tubes and assorted medical equipment. It’s still my favorite trick or treating experience ever…though when my blonde husband colored his hair and beard black and our toddler wouldn’t talk to him was pretty funny also.
I came on board in the 70’s and I can’t say that I remember a Haunted House there, but I do associate Amling’s with Halloween for sure. Once we moved out of the urban part of the city to a quieter southwest side neighborhood, it became all about trick or treating.
I found an article on the place here. For years, our family would make the mandatory pre-Halloween trek from Austin on Chicago’s West Side to the wilds of Melrose Park just to do the haunted house.
That sounds about right, and now I think I probably did hit the haunted house too as we trekked from Pilsen to do it, but I was too young to remember much detail.
Our church did a Trunk or Treat this year for the first time. There were several other churches who also did them. Ours was early in the afternoon (1-4PM) so kids could still do traditional trick-or-treating later. I view these things as supplements to actual trick-or-treating, not replacements for them. The nearest mall is over an hour away, so there’s not much mall trick-or-treating going on around here!
We had probably 300 kids come through our church parking lot in the three hours we were there. In contrast, our doorbell only rang about five times all night. My daughter went over to friend’s house to trick-or-treated with her on the other side of the neighborhood.
Our neighborhood is HUGE, has no sidewalks, copious numbers of trees, almost no streetlights, and lights up like a Christmas tree on the sex offender registries. I live on a dead-end street with only 5 houses (one of which is vacant) and no street light. Only about half the houses (if that) hand out candy. Under those circumstances I am not surprised that many parents choose to take their kids elsewhere.