09/16/2026
"ARE TRUNK OR TREATS RUINING HALLOWEEN?"
My opinion is as follows.
First, remove your nostalgia goggles. I was a child in the 70s. A time when you were sent out alone, with your friends and your siblings, to wander the streets without parental supervision (there's evidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUWl2gU8c8 ), so I have some THICK nostalgia goggles myself, thinking back to 'the good old days'.
In the 80s I was becoming 'too old' for trick-or-treating, but by the late 80s I began decorating my house and being the 'treat giver,' and I started to notice then that fewer house had lights on than I remembered in my youth. This began the 'circle' that lead to the death of Trick-or-Treating as we used to know it.
A house finds Trick-or-Treating to be not worth the trouble -> They turn off the porch lights ->Trick-or-Treaters see fewer lights and judge the neighborhood 'not worth the visit' ->House finds Trick-or-Treating to be not worth the trouble ->House turns porch lights off -> ... and round and round until whole neighborhoods are dark.
The reason it isn't worth the trouble could be chalked up to the expense. Candy has gotten more expensive every year. It might be a general societal push toward healthy eating. It could be that the home's occupants are the wrong age. (They're young people going to their own parties, they're parents taking out their own kids so they can't sit at home on Halloween, they're senior citizens who aren't spry and don't want to get up and down every 2 minutes to hand out candy) or maybe they're religious and don't celebrate Halloween. For whatever reason, the house goes dark on October 31.
Some streets/neighborhoods escape this, but even in the 70s there were 'good neighborhoods' to go to and ones you didn't bother with, so this is nothing new. I ran a haunted yard/walkthrough for a decade. Two blocks up and (half of one over) was a 'good neighborhood,' and then there were maybe 3 houses with lights on between it and our haunt. We'd send people up to the corner to direct people down to us because they couldn't see us from the corner and didn't want to traverse the shadowy corridor of non-participating houses on Lake Street.
So, first issue: dark houses = no interest. No interest= dark houses.
Then you have to take the 'Halloween is DANGEROUS!!!' campaign that raged from the mid 70s to the 90s. First it was 'razor blades in apples!' and it's moved on to 'stranger danger' and kind of made a nest there for a while. There are hundreds of thousands of independent studies to put every possible fear to rest if they choose to educate themselves and take the proper precautions. Still, it persists and some issues *are* realistic (unaware drivers, falls over uneven terrain, bad weather, etc.)
Second issue: Safety.
Now on to the change in society. This is where the nostalgia goggles tend to warp things the most. The advent of VCRs and cable, and then the internet, and then streaming, changed how we celebrate Halloween. When I was young, there was exactly ONE chance a year to catch The Great Pumpkin. Now, if you want to watch it in mid-March at 1 in the morning, you can. In the 90s and early 2000s, there were blocks of programming on cable channels devoted to Halloween stuff for kids or grown-ups that made October feel like 'the only spooky month' and now, there's little point because everyone is streaming and they can watch Hocus Pocus anytime they want on Disney+. Shudder is 24/7/365 scary movies. 'Spooky season' never really 'shows up', it's always there for folks who are looking.
Schools stopped having Halloween activities (no making jack-o-lanterns out of paper plates and hanging them all over the elementary school hallway. No school-sponsored Halloween carnival. No 'costume parades', no 'local librarian dresses like a witch and comes to read an age-appropriate spooky book to the kindergarteners', etc.) which made it feel like Halloween was a spooky cool thing for kids to do. Halloween was once taught to kids as 'their one night of fun' with the same gusto as they were taught how to count to 100 or how to identify the powerhouse of the cell.
Third issue: Halloween doesn't feel like a 'special event' like it once did.
Then, the final knell as it were... It's simply EASIER to take your kid to the parking lot of the Elk's Lodge or the city park pavilion, or the local mall and walk them from car to car, get them the 'costume & candy experience,' and be done in an hour.
If they're toddlers and preschoolers, they aren't forced to climb up and down dozens of stairs; it's all on one level. You can go from car to car, and they don't get worn out walking half a block to the next lit house twenty times a night. (problem 1) You don't have to worry about strangers (problem 2) because you're right there! And the gathering of festive people, cars bedecked, all in one place makes it feel like it's an event! (third issue)
If the kids are older, where the former problems aren't so magnified, they either have younger siblings who fall into the former category and so they must be dragged along, or that's all they've ever known, and they don't understand what 'it used to be like'. Time changes what is 'normal'.
I'm in Gen X. To compare MY Halloween to the Halloween of my grandchildren would be equal to comparing the Halloween I celebrated as a kid to the Halloween of someone from the Great Depression. (1935-1985 = 50 years. 1985-2025= 50 years) I didn't cut notches in thread spools, then go roll them on neighbors' windows to make a 'scary noise,' and then run away. (Angus Scrimm of the Phantasm movies tells a story of doing this in his youth).
We live in a time where everything is instant. We have access to the repository of all the world's information in our hands at any moment. You can get anything you want delivered to your house in 24 hours or less. Why would you make it harder to get what you want than it has to be?
Why should a person spend upwards of hundreds of dollars for candy only to be the only porch lit and get 3 trick or treaters if they're lucky? Why should a mom risk that their kid get hit by a car when they could safely walk through a shopping center and get more candy in 30 minutes than they'd get with three hours of traipsing all over God's green earth going up and down steps and spraining their ankle by stepping wrong off a curb in the dark? Why struggle to load and unload kids in and out of car seats and boosters all evening to drive from little island of lit houses to the next little island? Just because that was how they did it before home computers were a thing? That's dumb.
Fourth issue: Convenience.
Do you see the appeal of Trunk-or-Treat now?
Does that mean I accept that it's the only way to do things and the old ways are gone forever? NO WAY!!
I want to bring back the way it once felt. The 'ooh, this is spooky time! It's MY night to be whoever I want! I can get candy and show some independence because I'm going up to that door all by myself (or maybe with my sibling, but I mean without a grown-up!) and getting the reward for bravery that is a fun-size Snickers bar!' feeling.
So, how?
We need to do what Trunk-or-Treat did... in reverse.
Trunk-or-Treat says 'Here are lots of well-lit and spooky participants in close proximity to one another who decorate and have candy to give. People who have taken it upon themselves to make the season seem special.' So, we have to do that in our neighborhood. Light those porch lights. Decorate. Have people present who want to be there. And yes, advertise. Make sure people know that if they come to your area, there will be something to make it worth their while.
-Talk to your neighbors. Ask them straight out what their plans for Halloween are. Tell them yours. Get an idea of how many intend to decorate. How many don't celebrate at all. How many dark lights you can look forward to on October 31. If you can persuade them, suggest bringing back 'old school' Halloween to YOUR neighborhood.
If they're young and childless - Tell them you plan to 'do a thing like Trunk-or-Treat, but instead of cars, we'll use our yards/driveways/garages to set up in. Tell them that you plan to advertise so there will actually be kids to give out treats to. If they have out-of-the-house plans, then ask if they mind having a 'yard grandma' (see below)
If they're young parents - Offer to provide them a 'yard grandma'. Lots of people live rurally, or in neighborhoods where nobody's visiting, and would happily volunteer to sit in a chair on the porch or in the garage and watch over the treats while Mom & Dad take the kids out to enjoy Trick-or-Treating themselves for a few hours. Mention the advertising.
If they're older and spry - Remind them of the old days and offer to help them with decorating if they need help. Mention the advertising so they can be assured that the Trick-or-Treaters will know to come.
If they're older and NOT spry - Give them the same offer as the young parents. A person who would come over and hand out treats on their behalf because, as you told them, you're advertising.
(If you want an idea on where to find 'yard grandmas' (of all ages) try your local school bus driver company. They are usually subject to stringent background checks that ensure they're safe to have around little kids, an assurance you can pass on to the person using one.)
Most people reading this probably have either experience making cheap, cool Halloween decorations for the house/yard, or have so much extra stuff they could volunteer to loan out props like a lending library to neighbors who want to decorate but don't have the time or money.
Maybe you could do a neighborhood Halloween Carnival. Offer to provide each house a different game to run and then designate the 'prize house' where the tickets they win at each game can be turned in to buy prizes paid for by a collection taken up from every participating house. Five tickets for a spooky pencil. Ten for a candy bar. Twenty for a plushie... etc. Advertise it as the event is is!
Do you decorate your yard or have a home haunt? (You are here listening to me rant so the chances are good) so you just advertise THAT as a facet of the event as well.
Do you live where there's an HOA? See about sponsoring a contest where the winning house gets some kind of cool recognition or prize. Do you live in the country, or is your neighborhood just not willing to participate? Find a neighborhood to adopt! I'm sure you have friends who live somewhere in need of your skills and who'd like to see THEIR neighborhood come back to spooky life.
The short TL; DR version is this. Trunk-or-Treats are not inherently bad, but if you don't like them and want things to swing back toward 'how it was in the day', then you have to do something to bring about that change. Not just in your yard, but on your street. In your neighborhood. In your town.
That's my take. What's yours?
