Another Year, Another Wonderful Night of Trick or Treating

Blogging, dan ariely, family, happiness, humor, lessons learned, Teaching and Education 2 Minutes

I wasn’t aware of this until right before I came up with the idea for tonight’s post. But somehow I have written a post about Halloween for each of the past five years.

Well, now it is six years in a row.

As I have written in past years, we live in the perfect neighborhood for trick or treating. There are lots of houses close together, and there are A LOT of young kids.

We regularly get more than one hundred trick or treaters, and tonight was no exception.

It was another wonderful night to celebrate Halloween.

But I did notice one thing that was different this year, or at least as I recall it was different.

It seemed all of our neighbors set up tables at the end of their driveways, and placed their bowl of treats on the table. And many of the adults would sit next to the table, enjoying an adult beverage.

Now don’t get me wrong, it was a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday. It was an easy way for kids to just walk down the street and grab candy off of each table, while barely stepping foot on the property.

I have to admit that I missed the kids walking up to the door, knocking on it, and then opening to hear them shout trick or treat. I mean that’s the way I did it as a kid, so that makes it the best way…

I’m not sure if it was a COVID thing, or if this is the way our neighborhood will celebrate Halloween moving forward. If it is, I’ll adapt; and stock up on adult beverages for next year…

And one final note.

I always enjoy watching kids’ behavior when they stick their hands in the bowl of snacks. Some kids just politely take one, some grab as many as they can, some ask how many they are allowed, and my favorite – a couple of kids reached in and accidentally grabbed a couple of pieces of candy, and put everything back except one.

But the best observation was watching the house across the street. The owners are a young couple who were out trick or treating with their daughter, and left their bowl of candy on a table, unattended, at the end of their driveway. It seemed as if most kids just took one piece of candy, but I did notice one small group of kids go back to the table three times, and each time they grabbed a handful of candy.

I’m not sure what it all means, but I’m sure Dan Ariely would have a field day with it. Maybe I should invite him to my neighborhood for next Halloween…

*image from Domestic Fashionista

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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97 thoughts on “Another Year, Another Wonderful Night of Trick or Treating”

  4. Halloween is a lot of fun. We don’t trust kids, so we just hand them the candy (three pieces per kid). And we also give each adult a piece of candy. I’ll bet Dan Ariely could make something of that, also, observing the varied behavior of how adults dispense candy.

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  6. We live at the end of a private drive up a steep hill and rarely get any trick-or-treaters. When someone makes the trek, we reward them thoroughly.

    I’m with you about watching the behavior of kids at Halloween. It makes for some interesting experiments and observations.

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  8. if you consider that kids are just mini adults, their candy behaviors are not totally surprising. some will politely take just one, and others, well…. i always find it funny too, and when they come to my door, i always offer them more than one, due to being 1/2 italian i suppose and just thinking everyone is always hungry and because i just love to celebrate everything. the end of the driveway set up seems to be a covid thing and wonder if it will stick around. when i was a kid the dads took us out and had a beer some of the houses along the way. i love that you have so many kids, i love seeing kids of all ages, out having fun –

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    1. we had a mix of both the large size hershey bars, and then a mix of fun size bars. Those hershey bars went pretty quickly. We told kids they could have a Hershey bar or two of the fun size, but we gave up saying anything after the first few…

      but is is fun seeing all the kids dressed up and having fun…

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  9. You had a great Halloween — more like Halloween when I was a kid in terms of numbers. I didn’t like candy and gave it away. Halloween is a fun time for kids and adults. Though it is a little surprising the tradition has survived form a health and fitness standpoint.

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  11. 100? Sounds like my idea of hell! And it’s 100 more than I had, thankfully. Here’s a tip for next year: before you give them any sweets ask them if they know what Halloween is really about. Only correct answers get a treat.

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  12. Looks like a Halloween buffet. Also looks like it’s still light out. It might be just me but wandering the streets and knocking on doors in the dark is a big park of Halloween for kids. Or it was when I was a kid. Guess I am getting old.

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      1. Well I hope I didn’t mislead everyone because I didn’t get that many kids. Even with giving four bars per kid, I still have too much candy left over. I always buy too much. Years ago the street was full of kids but theses days it’s full of retirees.

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  16. My M.O. was always to sit on the front porch on our glider with a glass of red wine and pass out candy. We always decorate with burning pumpkins and flashing lights. When I quit drinking, I was shocked to learn that Halloween was my hardest sobriety night of the year. I had really ritualized my routine. Now I’ve mostly passed the duty to my son. Last night, he torched the pumpkins and passed out the candy. When the last group showed up for candy, I heard him say “Hey, haven’t you already been here once?” He’s getting the curmudgeon vibe established early.

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    1. it is funny how rituals get established, and how hard they are to break from. I’m glad you were able to successfully transition the job to your son, including that curmudgeon vibe…

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  18. Last night was Charlotte’s first experience with Halloween (the year before we were in major lockdown paranoia and the year before that she broke her foot ON Halloween poor thing and the year before that she was too young to care and we didn’t care to make the effort of going out with a 12month old lol).. She had great fun! We went to my sister’s cul-de-sac and I, too, noticed the tables at the end of the driveways with adults attending it with a beverage in hand. I’m not gonna lie, it felt a bit intimidating if there were a lot of adults standing by chatting and laughing (intimidating for an adult like me, much less a little girl who’s never experienced Halloween) but it did save us from having to go up and down the long driveway and I guess people also didn’t want a bunch of kids mucking up their lawns.

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  19. It’s good to see kids being thoughtful of others with their candy.

    I hope the adult beverage that you are planning to stock up on is for yourself, and not for the trick-or-treaters next year… hahaha…

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  21. Hilarious Jim. And it seems you are quite the observer. Perhaps you should be the mayor of your street, lol. Our old neighbor always knew what was going on in the neighborhood and would report to me and my husband. We’d laugh and dubbed him the Mayor of our street. 🙂

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  22. And just like that it’s been six years. And in another six years you’ll be writing your twelfth Halloween post, and you’ll be thinking about me mentioning this six years prior. Time’s scary like this. Dang, I almost dread your next year’s Halloween post now.

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    1. there are tradeoffs with the end of the driveway thing. it is nice to be out and chatting with the neighbors, but I miss the experience of kids coming up to your door and saying trick or treat…

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