It's Halloween. Now's Your Chance to Stop the Most Annoying ...
I grew up trick-or-treating in New York City. Every year, my friend and I would gallop down 16 floors raking in candy, and then run next door to her apartment building and repeat the entire procedure. My older brother, thinking 16 floors was child’s play, would wrangle a Halloween invite to his friend’s high-rise, where he could canvass an entire 40 floors. Afterward, he would switch masks and do it all over again. Even my mother, a stickler for propriety, appreciated his entrepreneurial spirit.
No one accompanied us. That sad crone the Switch Witch, the Dolores Umbridge of Halloween, didn’t swindle us out of our candy that night in exchange for a few bucks. No one enforced the current mind-numbing cultural norm of only taking one piece of candy per door. Because, while it might come as a shock to kids today, Halloween used to be about healthy greed. Even mischief! You had a hall pass to be, well, a little bit naughty.
No longer. These days, trick-or-treating seems to be infected by the same strain of overparenting the Atlantic and the New York Times write about weekly. In our neighborhood, a lovely, Halloween-forward enclave known for huge blow-up black cats, Haunted House garages, and even the occasional full-size candy bar, an adorable throng descends every Oct. 31. And no sooner has some delightful little Tinkerbell or Pythagoras or Black Panther reached for our candy cauldron than a parent rushes in, reminding them not to take too much, pressing them to say thank you before a fun-size Snickers has even left the bowl. Parents, we have got to stop. Because when I see this jostle of sweet, well-mannered kids on my doorstep, meekly claiming their one piece of candy, I fear for our civilization.
Where is the electric spark of greed, the thrilling desire to get away with something? I was thinking about this a few weeks ago when I traveled to Boston for my uncle’s memorial service, because no one enjoyed Halloween more than he did. My uncle loved dressing up and scaring the kids, in an age-appropriate way; he loved buying bags and bags of candy; he loved the spirit of G-rated wickedness. But about 10 years ago, he began to notice a change. I remember his dismay at how polite the trick-or-treaters had become. “Where’s the spunk?” he said, throwing his arms in the air, as if we were on the precipice of Roman Empire–style decline. “Where are the kids grabbing hugely inappropriate handfuls of candy?” My uncle believed in manners, in decency, in raising children who were not wild beasts, but I will tell you, this distressed him.
And he was right. Something has happened to Halloween. When did parents start clogging the streets, outnumbering their own children, accompanying not only preschoolers but also kids who look old enough to watch a PG-13 movie? When did we all start participating in this sad manners march, enforcing some unspoken, hideous one-piece-of-candy rule? I will admit my experience here is in coastal cities only, so maybe in the heartland kids are still running wild, grabbing hugely inappropriate handfuls of Twizzlers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. But I doubt it.
I doubt it because, despite everything I’ve just written, I do this with my own kids. I may stand at the door, wanting your cute little children to lunge into my candy bowl, fistfuls of Milky Ways and Tootsie Pops dangling from their knuckles, but when I accompany my own son and daughter, I become just another member of the sad manners police. I hover behind them, making sure they stick to their one allotted piece, jumping in with “What do you say?” before they even have a chance to utter thank you. I don’t think it’s an accident my 11-year-old asked to be a bush for Halloween last year and then galloped away with his friends, blending into the hedges until I was left jogging behind, searching for them. “Oh yes, the bushes went that way,” one kind elderly woman told me. She seemed pleased the foliage had made a getaway.
The truth is, parenting has transformed so much, with so many new norms and expectations, that it feels almost unbearable to watch our kids behave like, well, kids, on Halloween. What does it say about you if your child grabs a big, greedy handful without saying thank you? Well, maybe it says your kid is a kid, reveling in a holiday that literally revolves around taking candy from strangers! I care deeply about raising kind humans, I want my kids to be polite, but truly, if we can’t let them be a little rambunctious on Halloween, who are we?
And before I throw all parents, including myself, under the bus here—I understand that distracted driving and worries about kids getting hit by cars on Halloween are very real, so I guess we should nod toward car culture as an another factor that’s ruining the holiday. But I think, using judgment, more trick-or-treating independence is still possible. This year, I am going to let my son trick-or-treat alone with his friends. I will try, with all my might, to walk at least a block behind my daughter. I will force the syrupy phrase, “What do you say?” to die in my throat. This is my solemn vow.
Because poke beneath the meek veneer of today’s trick-or-treaters, and a rapacious Halloween spirit still burns. I’m thinking of the teenager who came by our door last year, pillowcase slung over his shoulder, costume so minimal as to be questionable if it was even a costume at all, who cleaned out our entire bowl at last call. “Take as much as you want, really get in there!” I said, and he looked at me, glanced around to see if any other kids were coming, and then he just went for it, dumping every last piece of candy into his sack with a determination that’s going to make him the CEO of a Fortune 500 company someday. It was like the piercing of the veil, and it gave me a satisfaction no trick-or-treater, no matter how cute or sweet, can ever replicate with milquetoast-y restraint.
As my uncle would say: Kids gotta have some spunk.
