Well, another Trick or Treat is down the hatch. Some thoughts…
Not much has changed. Not much really does, at least on a year-by-year basis.
The costumes are all roughly the same as they were the year before ofc, and the same as the year before that. There was a lot of Disney, I noticed… natch. One girl dressed up as Princess Sofia the First. That was cute. Another girl was Jasmine. There were a few Elsas, one Anna.
Some Harry Potter characters were sprinkled amongst the kids. A Dumbledore here, a Snape there. This year I noticed an Enid Sinclair- a first. There was a Mario and a Luigi pair, of course. There has been one of those for Halloween every year in this town for probably the last forty years.
There was a dinosaur, and… some other stuff, there was a Riddler costume that I liked. You don’t see many of those. Oddly enough I didn’t see one Batman, now that I think about it. Weird, that. Maybe I did and it just didn’t register, like… oh yeah, Batman, like, it’s Halloween, why wouldn’t a kid be dressed up as Batman? It would be like seeing a man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt at Walmart. So… yeah. *Shrug*.
One Pennywise that was well done, a pretty good Jason, some assorted zombies and vampires etc. and it was a very typical Halloween, a lot of fun etc.
Of the lot of kids I suppose the most popular category of costume would be “fairy princess”, alongside “undead thing”.
I noticed an uptick in the werewolves this year. Is that b/c of Enid? I wonder. I didn’t count them in the “undead thing” category BTW.
Other stuff… well there really isn’t much else to say, except to again contrast the Halloween of <current year> with those of my own youth. Leaving aside other aspect of the Holiday like movies (which can be seen at any time, really) the Trick or Treat experience really is profoundly different, or at least it is where I live.
These days you need a parent to chaperone kids around, believe it or not. Back in the day that would have been unheard of, almost baffling. The adults plan actual routes for the kids and almost all of the costumes are off the shelf. The hours are defined, and posted online even. It’s a very… packaged experience.
Halloween back then was… different. Adults didn’t accompany anyone, at least when we did it. Routes weren’t planned (or at least, not well, lol). Kids just kind of wandered and hoped that the older kids in the group knew where they were going and had some idea of what to do. This… was not always for the best. I did notice a distinct lack of crying amongst the youngest kids tonight. IDK, maybe having adults along isn’t so bad lol.
It also ends before it gets dark dark outside, which it didn’t used to- you used to have to eat dinner first and then go out, and by God, by then it was pitch black outside and cold as hell, and you couldn’t see anything, you were tired and starting to see things, blah.
Yeah I think that’s kind of it, the issue with Trick of Treating today, if there is one, is the distinct lack of… creepiness?
I mean not that I could feel that, considering my present chronological situation of being middle aged, but still.
In my “friend” group back in the day I was near the middle of the pack age wise. Older than me were a few hardened Gen X-ers who didn’t give a fuck about the dumb little kids who would routinely hold up the pack simply because they couldn’t keep up. Honestly I would feel sorry for them, but I guess we were all in that place at one point. I guess I was, although I don’t remember it.
What I do remember are the stories that the older kids used to tell the littler ones about the horrors that waited for them in those weird little shacks that were wayyyyyy off the beaten path. You know those houses- those odd little shanties that you can tell have people living there, but you can’t tell who is living there or why people are living there? Those places.
Stories about the owners of those places being forced to live in them because they used to eat children etc. Obvious nonsense but in the right context and with no adults present it can scare 6 year olds for sure. In cases like this it isn’t the Halloween decorations that are scary, but the *lack of* decorations, or frankly sentience, that is scary. Never had much luck with these places candy wise, and that’s probably for the best. Honestly should have left well enough alone TBH.
The candy is all very… samey, too. I stole quick glances in the bags as I deposited my offerings. It was all the famous stuff- Snickers, M&Ms, uh, you know, the famous stuff, back when I was a kid there was all of that and then there was… other stuff, IDK what it even was, but I would get odd things, candy stuff I couldn’t identify TBH, literally candy objects without names and dates or any identifying information whatsoever, and I’d put that stuff into a little pile afterwards and I’d be like… WTF is this? Am I brave enough to… eat(?)… this?
Sometimes I’d get cookies, like, actual cookies, in little bags, or loose apples (!) or… yeah, weird stuff, other things, odd things. Things like bits of scripture from Christian households, etc. The houses that gave out scripture used to get pelted with eggs as punishment lol. The ones that refused to give out candy / whatever would get TPed as punishment.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single Halloween in which a house (or multiple houses) in our town wasn’t punished for not adhering to the “rules” of Trick or Treating as set forth by my friends. This year while handing out candy I was thinking… that rule for requiring parents to be present at all times- was that in response to us? Well… *Shrug*.
Honestly, looking back, we were kind of terrible. I distinctly remember houses that were away on vacation desperately trying to offer us an olive branch by leaving us a vat of candy anyways, in the hopes that that would deter some unnecessary wrath. That was a smart move; I remember it working, but man, I ended up with a LOT of Snickers one year. I remember some puzzled looks from the parentals, yes, but other than that, everything seemed to go well.
Ah, what fun. Halloween, what a holiday!