Trick-or-Treat, Where Are You?

 The pitter-patter of sneakers on the sidewalk from house to house. Cries of delight to all that this house was the place to get the goods. Echoed by a Happy Halloween in the crisp night air. A time when children converged onto neighborhoods asking for candies. 

The neighborhood that I grew up in as a youngster still has kids every Halloween coming to the doors. With trunk or treating and other carbon copies, it feels as though this tradition is dying, at least from the standpoint of a kid that grew up in the 90s and early 00s (Yes I am sure that there are still communities that do this, so I am not saying it is completely dead.)  When all month long kids can don a costume and go to a trunk or treat, or walk downtown to businesses and get candy, or a some what carnival event three weeks before (just another way to advertise for a business). The options are endless throughout October. 

I remember Harvest carnivals put on by elementary schools the weekend before Halloween or in the middle of the week. They would have their booths for a craft or game and a spook alley. Just enough to get the excitement up for the night of Hallows Eve. All month long you would countdown to Halloween to go knock on doors asking for candy and to show everyone your costume. Hoping you didn’t get a house that made you do a trick to get your treat. Those houses usually ended up getting pranked once the porch light was off and the children were all tucked away, dreaming of the candy hoard that they had gathered. 

Conventionally, this is how we have seen Halloween since the 1950s. Costumes, Candie, Free Roam. Slipping further and further away from the tradition of Samhain. When we would gather around bonfires, remember the dead, and give thanks for the harvest, praying to the king of winter that they would survive with what they received during the harvest. (In an era with pandemics we would want to be grateful and hope we make it through the winter.) 

We all have a snob hill in our towns or gated communities, where we would love to get the treats that these houses give to begging children. The ones that will have all the fancy costume parties and king-size candy bars. This tradition has not changed since the poor would go to rich houses asking for food or money, but for a kid from the land of shadow, this is the bonfire light in the dark. Those immense homes always lit up saying “look at me I have the candy you seek.” 

I never made it to the snob hill of my hometown as a kid. I honestly didn’t need to get candy from those houses. The neighborhoods that I traveled with my siblings or friends gave out plenty of treats. I had friends that would want to receive those gifts. But in the shadow's land is where I was home trick or treating. 

Along with trick or treating, is the custom of costume-wearing to keep you safe from the spirits that roam the hallowed night. Sadly, they as well have transformed into branded names, slutty something or other, or PB&J couples sets. 

I live in an apartment complex with plenty of kids and kids in the surrounding houses. In the three-plus years my family and I have lived here, not once have I had a costumed fiend come to our door asking for candy. Has the Shadow’s land been forgotten to trunk-or-treats, business walks, carnivals weeks beforehand? Or, in a broader look, are kids and parents all burnt out from all the pre-festivities that the actual day to trick-or-treat is a distant memory? Or has that bonfire beacon on the hill driven out the shadowland? Then there is the thought that the porch light is off to enfold in selfish desires. (These people probably didn’t trick or treat, as kids themselves.) 

So where are you Trick-or-Treat? Where is your costumed friend? Are you as exhausted as I to celebrate a rite of childhood? 

My kids love Halloween because their dad loves Halloween. This is a time to use your imagination to overcome your ghosts, goblins, and witches. To adventure in the dark and return with plunder. With superstition and tradition overshadowed by science and corporations, Trick-or-Treating will never be as it was. The only hope is that the stories from those bygone days are told to the coming generations to keep that pumpkin flame a glow.  

Grab the pillowcase, don the homemade costume and travel the shadowland and for plunder. 

KW Dean is from Southern Utah