General Etiquette > Holidays

[Update] Halloween Neighbor "Candy Pass" [update post 92]

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I haven't been around for a while but this just cropped up in my neighborhood and thought - what better place to share!

My neighborhood is very popular with trick-or-treaters every Halloween.  I count them using an app on my phone and last year we reached almost 400 children - it was a gorgeous fall evening and we ended up closing up shop when we ran out of candy at 8:20 p.m.

A neighbor has posted fliers at the three neighborhood school bus stops offering "good" candy to trick-or-treaters who live in the neighborhood - all the kids have to do is stop by their house before Halloween with a parent to somehow get their name on a list, and then Halloween night they just get checked off the guest list, and they get premium candy, whereas all other takers get lesser offerings, presumably.

Honestly, it doesn't bother me that 90% of our trick-or-treaters are from outlying areas - the rural community isn't far from our place, where the kids don't have a safe or populated area to solicit treats, so I just resign myself to the fact that I am going to be treating mostly kids from outside the neighborhood.  If I didn't like Halloweening, I'd just shut off the lights as the vast majority of TorT'ers respect the porchlight status.

I personally think this one household/couple/family is causing more grief than needed - their home is  four doors down from ours so they're getting the same 350+ kids as us; on Halloween last year I ended up just parking on the porch rather than opening the door every 8.6 seconds and I didn't have time to vet every costumed kid that came a-knockin'.  To me it just seems to be more of a passive-aggressive statement against the packs of kids that get transported in than anything else.

Wow! That is really out there!

Before my kids were of school age, we lived in not so nice of a neighborhood. We would take them to my friends nicer street, and we would go together. The kids had fun with their friends, and we felt safer.

Eventually, we were able to move to the same neighborhood. I did not discriminate with the kids that showed up. I know many traveled to our neighborhood. That is so rude and presumptuous of your neighbor.

Halloween is for kids. Let them enjoy it!

My kids are grown now, and I work 2nd shift. I had tried leaving a bowl a couple of years, but there are always those that take it all. I no longer participate. I do miss not seeing my granddaughter trick or treat, but that is life. 

Oh Joy:
I see it as poor execution of a good intention.

We grew up in a similar neighborhood; most of the rural kids for many miles around were driven into town where there were several blocks of houses together.  BTW - there were no social was just geography.

Our doorbell hardly rang because the stream of ToTers was too steady for us to leave the door often.  We chose to buy inexpensive (but not yucky!) candy mixes because we went through so much.  But we had two other bowls out of sight: pennies for UNICEF (how old am I?) and mini chocolate bars for our neighborhood kids. 

Sometimes we missed giving the special candy to groups with we knew.  Either they were too disguised, or there were too many other kids in the surrounding herd.  But in the midst of - gladly - being used by families who couldn't reciprocate, it was meaningful to offer them what they would have gotten if we didn't live in a destination neighborhood.

So I give your neighbors a pass for what they're trying to do.  But their tactics unfortunately are more divisive and awkward.  I hope they find a better system next year.

I feel for kids who live in neighborhoods where it is unsafe to walk on the street or go trick or treating, and I don't blame their parents for wanting to take them somewhere they can have a safe experience. In my book, if you wear a costume, you get candy. This includes teens who some might think are "too old" to be trick or treating, and adults. Costume = candy. I can't be bothered differentiating between kids who live on our street vs the next street over vs across town or even from a different town. (Last year my son trick or treated in my mom's neighborhood, four towns away, on Halloween night because our own trick or treating was postponed due to a bad storm that took out a lot of electricity. I didn't feel bad about it. My mom's been handing out candy for 25+ years since my brother and I moved out.) If a kid we love came to our door when no other kids were within hearing distance, I'd probably tell them to take an extra candy or two, but that's as far as I'd take the "good candy for our own kids" scenario.

I'm honestly not bothered at all by people traveling to trick or treating.  There are kids I'm sure who come in from surrounding farms and I have no way of telling, what with masks and such, who's from our neighborhood and who isn't.   And sure there are kids who might try to double dip by going ToT in their neighborhood and then someone else's but really, how would you know if that Grim Reaper has already been ToT'ing across town?

Last year I had to go out and buy more candy so this year we'll probably end up buying some more off the bat but I just don't think this idea of the neighbors sounds very kind.


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