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.
Everyone in my area stays outside, no matter the weather. No kids knock on any doors. Also, no one leaves out a bowl, that shit would be gone in minutes. But people are outside with portable fire rings, music, some have cocktails for the adults. It’s the only night of the year all of the neighbors are outside and socializing. Honestly it’s great.
One of the houses this year had a couple of signs that led you to “knock three times” on the door. It was pretty fun for the kids.
The houses that do leave bowls are my favorite, the kids trick or treat as normal but when there’s a bowl-house I take one extra for dad lol
I leave a bowl out, and this year I had a trash can out in case anyone needed it. At the end of the night, the only thing in it was an empty hard cider bottle. Had a laugh
Nice, trash can is a pro gamer move. We came up to a house and all the guy was giving out was bottled water. After the kids nagging about being thirsty for the first 30 minutes that guy was an MVP too - had a sit on his lawn while the three kids sat and silently quenched their thirst. 10/10 trick or treating QoL updates.
I didn’t get a single knock last night.
Spooky decorations, LED candles, WLED providing backup lighting, 12 XL Hershey bars with frozen Snickers as backup.
Not. One. Knock.
Fuck em – we’ll be eating smores all winter. 🤷
I got a knock last night. I had to apologize and say there’s no candy - I don’t live in the US. We have our own similar traditions on St. Martin’s day and St. Catherine’s day. The article for the latter even describes it: Wiki, though for either day you can click on the Estonian Wikipedia article to get a more complete description.
I suppose in the coming years I’ll have to start stocking candy for Halloween too because I don’t really want to disappoint a bunch of kids. Though to be fair, I don’t think they did much trick or treating anyway, they mostly just opened their bag and asked for candy - so it felt kinda lazy. When I was a kid, I remember groups of kids would come knock on our door for either Mardipäev or Kadripäev and they’d usually have something like a song or dance prepared, or at least told us riddles.
Thanks for that. I ended up in a wiki journey.
In the US all you are supposed to do is Knock and say “Trick or Treat”.
If I were you, just turn the porch light off. Its the universal sign for “Not home/No candy”
I moved to this place 2 years ago starting a lease on November 1st. Got here a day early, so third Halloween. Bought candy both of the first 2 years, and never got a knock on the door. Figured they just don’t do it in this area, all going to local Halloween events or such. So I didn’t buy candy this year, and poof sudden knocks on the door and I felt like absolute poop telling the kids sorry. Waited till they got down the drive and turned off the entry light so no one knocked after. I’m guessing since it rained all night (including when they came) some of the Halloween events may have been canceled, which made the kids finally come trick or treating… leaving me tricked and the kids without treats.
That’s funny, in my subdivision I had to put a sign up on my door that said “no candy” and I still got multiple knocks!
(I’m a Halloween Scrooge don’t judge me)
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.
That’s so weird. When I used to trick-or-treat (not murican so it was different ofc, and also we went to apartment doors instead of houses) I always assumed that if someone had a candy bowl it was just because they weren’t home that night, and I think I preferred it when they answered the door and gave us the candy themselves. It was nice to show off my costume and perhaps even get a compliment from an adult pretending to be scared.
Ok Boomer.
I never liked bowels. More fun to hand fist fulls of candy.
Might want to edit that to bowls lol
What you don’t agree that handing bowels is bad!?
You get between 5-730 in a lot of neighborhoods to do trick or treating. It’s a school night. I’m not spending a cumulative extra 30 minutes of my time watching my kid stand by the door so your old ass can slide off the couch and mosey over to the door and slowly talk to my kids individually about their costumes. And by some weird extension try to make small talk with me or a parent.
If your lonely, go to a bar. I’m trying to run these street with my kids and make some real candy profit.
Just put the fries in the bag, dude.
Damn dude, doesn’t even go till his kids say they’re cold. Why get a late bedtime on a holiday?
Growing up we always stayed out extra late on Halloween, even as a young child. An im not that old either.
My kids are younger. I’ve been doing this long enough to know which houses are going to spend time on each kid. Which is fine…except my kids and the neighbor kids I was walking through our neighborhood did have time for that.
Downvote me all you want.
Oh, don’t you worry your sweet little head, we will.
If your lonely, go to a bar. I’m trying to run these street with my kids and make some real candy profit.
If you just want a bunch of candy, go to Walmart.
Okay. Or…my kids are walking around with a gaggle of neighbors and we are all socializing. And then we have to go “that one guys house” where we sit and watch as he wastes 10 minutes while we’re 2 miles deep into a neighborhood. And kids have finite energy.
But if you don’t get the amount of candy you want in the end (and even with a slow pace my kids have always had more candy than they could ever finish), just buy some more. Who cares about the excess of candy?
Because it’s the experience my kids want. And they don’t just “go buy more candy” considering their 10 and 7.
Ohhhh nOOO ten minutes???
Just drop your poor kid off with one of his friends and stay home yourself, you sound like you ruin everyone’s good time all the time.
Nope we had a great time. And they’re 7 and 10. Old enough to not want to bother walking all the way up to a door and waiting.
I would be mad if some kids would come begging for my candy. MY CANDY! yes I’m fat.
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.
Same, bowl was stolen :( at least they didn’t take the table it was on
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.
Idk, in my area they knock on the door and it most often than not starts so early that were not even done eating. It’s usually so busy here that we have to stay at the door outside and we’re out of candies by the time the older kids start arriving when it’s actually dark
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
A few years back, I handed out candy for friends while they took their kids around the neighborhood, and a group of kids jokingly asked for potatoes. I obliged and grabbed them each a potato from the pantry.
When my friends came back, the potato house was apparently the talk of the kids in the neighborhood.
WTF really? My parents were super anal about anything not prepackaged.
Mine were too. And my wife is usually skeptical of strange baked goods, but a pickle straight out the jar with tongs and tissue paper can’t get much safer!
But what if someone hid a Bat’leth inside one of them?
Yeah, I hear that’s a thing now. People these days.
That wouldn’t be very warrior like, but let’s ignore that. If a klingon wanted you dead, then i think something hidden in the pickle jar is the least of your concerns
(The reference, in case anybody missed it: https://lemmy.world/post/21493783)
The pickle thing is weird. I also would be concerned about contamination.
Do you at least make them say “trick or treat”
My guess is, the kids aren’t supposed to knock and interact with strangers anymore cause their parents are scared.
Some places, trick or treating has been replaced with a group of parents driving to a parking lot and their kids going from truck to truck.They’re doing trunk or treat now, when they go to a planned event hosted by businesses during the sunlight hours. I guess it’s still fun, but it loses the neighborhood charm.
I just got back from taking one of my kids trick or treating with his friends. It was great. My wife and I got to walk and chat with the other parents while all of our kids knocked on doors and shouted “trick or treat!”. Lots of friendly, generous, nice people. And lots of shouted reminders from us for the kids to not walk on people’s front lawns, to say thank you, to be careful crossing the quiet roads. There were so many other kids out too. It was pretty crazy, but in a good way. About half of the houses were giving out candy in some way or other, with only about a quarter having an un-monitored bowl.
Then on the way home we drove past a church that was having a ‘trunk or treat’ in their parking lot. That just looked sad. There was no excitement for going up to the really cool houses that were decked out in amazing props and decorations. There was no need to hone analytical skills to determine which houses were giving out candy and which ones probably weren’t. Just going very short distances from one car to the next getting candy. My kid asked why they do that. I said it’s probably because they are a closed community who don’t really want to associate with ‘outsiders’. Give me the conventional experience over that all day every day!
The latter has been popular in rural areas too for years, because the alternative is driving your kids from house to house. I would have made it to like 5 houses a year max if I’d tried to walk as a kid (and probably got run over, lol).
We’re semi-rural (multi acre lots often with houses set almost at the back of lots), this was my first Halloween out here, I was following the kids with a car cause it was cold and snowy. But apparently the other parents in the neighborhood all hang out and set up a flatbed trailer with a fire pit, lawn chairs, and beer just being hauled around by a UTV. I need to learn how to make friends as an adult.
In a rural area, that makes sense. I can also understand if a school or parent group organizes this for kids who live in unsafe areas. But it’s perhaps even more popular in affluent areas because the paranoia there is just that intense.
Finally, a day when it is acceptable for me to lure children into my van!
Vans don’t have trunks asshole!
(A paraphrasing of “Castles don’t have phones asshole!” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show …)
My town does this at the city square. It started with all of the businesses around the square getting together to give out candy. Then the next year more people showed up for it. Then last year the city took over, did no advertising and almost no one showed up for it. Heck we went to another area to give out candy because we did not know. This year the city did it again, with zero advertising. There was a decent turn out for kids, but very few people giving out candy.
Our town is small and old, there are huge gaps between houses, much more so than when we lived in the city.
