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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
150 chocolate bars gone! And they had to ring the bell. Its a good neighbourhood for this.
If it came to skipping my house because no bowl, I’d skip Halloween altogether.
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.
Ok Boomer.
Not my experience. When I’ve had no decorations, my house was mostly skipped. When I put a few out with lights on, I got plenty of knocks and rings from both little kids with parents and young teens. And when I was cooking dinner one time, a teen could smell it and asked if they could have some, LOL. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They go for the unattended bowls so they can just take it all for themselves. I dressed up as a decoration scarecrow one or two years after I was too old to trick or treat myself and held a bowl of candy in my lap out on the porch. Every kid that attempted to take the entire bowl, got a scare as I stood up and shouted scary things like “TAKE THE BOWL, I TAKE YOUR SOUL!”
We only had one group visiting on Halloween. But that’s due to a decline of Halloween in general in this area - the fad is over. Here it basically started when our kids were young, and there were maybe five to ten groups coming through. But after a few years, it simply declined.
I still buy some sweets - I don’t want to disappoint kids - but whatever is left goes into the sweets bowl at work.
Put a bowl out but in the bowl just have a sign that says “please knock”
Ah yes, let’s skip the social part and get right to the obligatory consumption.
I don’t really care for Halloween, but I don’t actively hate it either. I like seeing kids and parents in cute costumes walking around. To me, the whole point has always been one of social activity, of walking around the neighbourhood and showing off your cool costume and such. You know, the whole “reinforcing horizontal social ties” deal we’ve done since forever.
Me and some friends of mine went out “reverse trick or treating” tonight, we carried around a door knocking at houses and giving them candy, and doing the same for any trick or treaters, that kind of thing. We were really disappointed by how few people we saw, and a majority of the houses in the area just had bowls. It made us feel quite sad actually.
I think we were just in an older neighborhood, full of mostly empty nesters with a few younger couples. I hope anyways. There’s a part of me that’s worried that Halloween is like a dying holiday I guess, but maybe that’s just because I’ve gotten older and have a different perspective. Who knows.
That’s sad. We only leave the bowl out during the time we are out trick or treating ourselves. All trick or treating is under fire, it seems. Have you heard of trunk-or-treat? Gah. And even people who live in safe areas will like their kids into a car and go drive to some affluent neighborhood where the decorations are fancier and full size bars are being given out. I greatly value the experience of knocking on my neighbors’ doors and it’s sad to see people discount this community building experience.
And even people who live in safe areas will like their kids into a car and go drive
Yeah, I’m annoyed about that sort of thing, too – albeit more about the car-brained laziness of parents idling a car from house to house instead of parking and walking with their kids, rather than the class issues – but that’s a different rant.
I greatly value the experience of knocking on my neighbors’ doors and it’s sad to see people discount this community building experience.
Thanks, you said what I was thinking but struggling to express.
I think maybe I’ll bring it up with my community association, to see if next year we can’t make some sort of organized effort to encourage door-answering (and communicate that renewed expectation to trick-or-treaters).
I took my kids trick or treating tonight and, in the neighborhood we go to, everyone who is handing out candy sits on their porch or driveway and it’s like a big block party. Nobody goes up to the houses with nobody outside because it’s assumed they aren’t participating. Being in rural texas, I probably wouldn’t let my kids knock on those doors, only if that’s what was the norm for the neighborhood. People be crazy out here.
The last time I was handing out candy at my old neighborhood, kids would ring the doorbell but then they’d just stand there and stare at me until I handed them candy. You’re supposed to say “trick or treat”!
Now I live in an apartment, so I don’t get trick-or-treaters. (I have candy just in case, but nobody ever knocks.) My roommate went to hang out with his sister and hand out candy at her place, and apparently their neighborhood has decreed that trick-or-treating ends at 7 sharp now so that nobody is out after dark? I don’t get it. I thought staying out late (and, for teens, potentially unsupervised) was part of the fun!
7? I guess as long as it is announced. My neighborhood doesn’t start until after 6 so people can get home.
The last time I was handing out candy at my old neighborhood, kids would ring the doorbell but then they’d just stand there and stare at me until I handed them candy. You’re supposed to say “trick or treat”!
That was happening to me sometimes, too. I’ve tried just standing there without offering the bowl to make it awkward until they figure it out, as well as just straight-up telling them “c’mon, say the words,” but it’s just so cringeworthy that they don’t get it in the first place.
