*TRICK-or-TREATING*

I can’t believe I am finally to an age where I can say this legitimately……

Back in MY day….I can remember Halloween being an all night affair. Come rain or snow we would not be detoured from our righteous goal.  We suited up in the colors and styles of our people and with empty pillow sack in hand, ventured out into the great wide world where treasures of sugary concoctions of every kind awaited us. It was all there, just waiting for us, only a doorbell ring away.  We would begin as soon as the sun began its slow descend in the sky, and we wouldn’t return home until our sacks were so full that we were forced to drag them behind us. We always knew which houses gave out the Full Sized candy bars (score!), and which houses gave out toothbrushes and floss (pass).

We learned valuable lessons about honesty and integrity when we were faced with a bowl of candy sitting on a front porch with a sign that read “Take ONE”. Those were trying times indeed, and we lost a lot of otherwise honest kids to the temptation of dumping the entire bowl into their sacks and casually walking away.

We learned essential communication skills as we were forced to ask for every piece of candy we were given. Sure some of us could get by if we had a mask on and other kids were saying the sacred phrase (plausible deniability), but for many of us, this is where we learned how to interact with strangers and ask for what we really wanted.

Once we were old enough that our parents trusted us to go without them, we learned how to be independent.  Trick-or-Treating was like a trial run for us moving out of the house and providing for ourselves. The harder you worked, the more candy you got, and those who were lazy or frightened by the world found that their sacks were never as full.

The spoils of that one evening could last us all the way through to Christmas, on a good year, but the memories and the lessons we learned would last for a lifetime…along with the diabetes.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE DAYS??? Forget about the Cowboys, I wanna know where have all the Trick-or-Treaters gone? I swear when we were kids we would out roaming the streets until at least 9pm or later, but now it seems that as soon as the sun goes down, the kids start to vanish like cockroaches….only opposite because cockroaches actually love the dark and they can also survive an atomic blast, which I’m pretty sure children could not…You get my point.

Is it just me or does it seem like we went from this…

                                                                                                *Ben Affleck Not Withstanding*

To this……

I conducted a highly legit poll of my mother and some people on a bus, and they confirmed what I already believed…..Trick-or-Treating is in fact dead.  Truly though, almost everyone I have talked to that owns a home reports that the numbers of Trick-or-Treaters has been on a steady decline over the years.  My mother informs me that where she once had to purchase several gigantic Costco sized bags of candy (which she would usually burn through before the kids were done coming to the door), she can now get by with one bag (with enough left over to make her hate herself in the morning).

So what is going on? Is the recession? Aliens? Global Warming? Obama? Why aren’t kids Trick-or-Treating anymore? Is it health conscious parents worried about the growing rate of childhood obesity? I remember when I was a kid the only thing my parents worried about when it came to Trick-or-Treating was this…

True Story: I actually spoke to a dentist who told me that he use to offer a service to all of his clients where they could come and have their kid’s candy X-Rayed to check for razor blades and other nasty surprises. When I asked him if he ever found anything, he informed me that in the 20 years he had been doing it, they had never ONCE found anything dangerous lurking in the children’s treats. I don’t know why I felt a small sense of disappointment…

I do actually have a theory as to what has happened to Trick-or-Treating, and I feel confident enough to share it with you. BEHOLD!!! The killer of Trick-or-Treat!!!!

                                                                                                       TRUNK-OR-TREAT!!!!

Yup. Trunk-or-Treat.

Bunch of people get together in a church or neighborhood parking lot, pop open their trunks, throw a few plastic spiders around for effect, and then sit with a bowl of candy as the children make the harrowing journey from trunk to trunk. I hear tales that this process can take as long as 30 minutes to complete, depending on the number of vehicles involved.

*Sigh*

OK, so I’m not a parent, so really, I don’t have any “right” to talk about what we “should” and “shouldn’t” be doing with our children on Halloween. I am not trying to imply that parents are lazy…though in complete honesty, several parents have told me that this is exactly why they prefer the Trunk-or-Treat, nor am I saying that parents have become too paranoid about stranger danger and allowing their kids to venture out into dark neighborhoods alone. I don’t even actually know if the parents are entirely to blame. Perhaps children are just getting more and more lazy. The only problem with that particular theory is the candy variable. Let me see of I can summarize…

Children + Candy = Happy

Children + MORE Candy = MORE Happy

…and so on and so forth.

Given the opportunity to visit 50 houses vs. 15 trunks, which do you think the sugar crazed youth is going to choose? Me too.

I am actually a huge advocate of healthy eating, especially for our kids, especially when it comes to limiting their refined sugar intake. That being said…It’s ONE night a year!!! True, the candy will last for more than one night (unless you were me and my siblings…dark days), but still, it’s something that they get to look forward to, and it just makes me a little sad inside when I think that this time honored tradition seems to be going the way of the dinosaur in favor of something more….convenient?

On behalf of children and children at heart I say, BRING BACK TRICK-OR-TREATING!!! VIVA LA TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!!