Sorry. No Candy Here. Halloween Grinchy McGrinchersons are Over Powered by the Lack of Trick-or-Treaters

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What. The. Fuck. Happened to Halloween? For the last nine years, I’ve taken my godson, nieces, nephews and their pals out on the hunt for candy. Each year it seems to get more and more sparse, both in the people handing out candy and the tiny humans racing from door to door to door for candy. Our trick-or-treating adventure has been in the same location for the last nine years. Friday will have been our last year spending Halloween at my aunt’s house. The torch has been passed to yours truly, as all my Clark Griswold dreams come true in a single year. House with the love of my life. Hosting My Family Halloween. Hosting Brian’s Family Christmas (and adding my family – OMG it’s going to be amazing). Side notes aside…Brian stayed at home to do some recon on our own trick-or-treaters, while I made my way to my aunt’s house for the fourth family holiday.

Brian was responsible for purchasing candy and 5 or 6 bags of freakin’ candy later, he informed me that we had maybe 6 or 7 groups trick or treat at our house. Well, my friends…after I take over, kids are going to be lining up down the block next year. I hope. It may take a couple years for word to get out…but they’ll come in droves. Oh yes. This Griswold means business.

One of the things I noticed this year, was the number of signs proudly displayed on homes stating NO CANDY! With a huge townhome complex of hundreds, if not thousands of homes, you would expect that the kids wouldn’t have to go far to fill their buckets and let us get home to be free from the FREEZING, SNOWY Chicagoland Halloween weather…instead it was one in six houses that had candy. And that’s being generous.

Sorry No Candy
No Candy. Sorry Bye-bye. Wow.
No Candy
Back-to-back signage.

 

Now, I remember this when I was a kid, sparingly. OKAY FINE. My grandma went out and bought one of those “Candy Here!” signs…and then wrote a big giant permanent marker, “NO” on top of it. But it was less common, I think.

Then there were the please take one buckets. Some empty and some full. You can tell the type of candy can make a difference…

Please Take One - Empty Bucket
This bowl obviously had the good stuff.
Please Take Two
This house said please take two. And the kids we were with did.

And there were, of course, some people handing out some candy and having oodles of fun with it. This lady was really happy when the kids knocked on her door and was SUPER sweet. She even let me snap a pic of her treat bowl!

 

Cool Halloween treat container
How cool is THAT bowl?

But what was truly sad was the lack of kids out trick-or-treating. It makes me really sad. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the number of families that no longer celebrate Halloween and trick-or-treating. Or the families with kids who have allergies (and my heart totally goes out to y’all). Or people who go to Halloween parties. Or it was just too fucking cold. And so on and so forth. But it makes me sad. We came across maybe 6 or 7 other groups of kids. Total. Brian said we had about 6 or 7 groups stop at our house for candy. Which leaves us with A LOT of Brian’s favorite candy.

Luckily, my godson is pretty much the world’s greatest child on the planet, and every time he say an Almond Joy in a treat box, he picked it and ran it back to his Auntie Chrissy. This kid is more than precious. He’s pretty much the best godson ever.  And the kids seemed to have a good time getting treats.

Did you go trick or treating this year? Did you find that there were fewer trick or treaters? Fewer candy houses?

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8 Responses

  1. We had a decent turnout, but it’s definitely been flagging in recent years. We got about 190, but we’ve had years where we nearly hit 300. Our street has more Halloween grinches than it used to, maybe that’s part of the problem?

  2. We had about the same amount of kids here this year, which was more than I could count but not enough to need more than 2 bags of candy. What I noticed that I did not like was kids standing in front of my steps yelling Trick or Treat at my door instead of coming onto the porch and knocking or ringing the bell. This happened both when my door was open (as I tend to leave it open to avoid the doorbell that freaks out the dog) and when it was closed. It’s 2 steps, kiddo, step up & show some respect.

    Also, and this I blame the parents for, but NO FUCKING RESPECT for my lawn. Adults and kids walking all up on it. Yes, it’s more of a dirt patch right now thanks to the drought than a lawn, but still…I have paving stones and a path way for a reason. Use it. My mom would have taken me home had I walked through people’s lawns who clearly had a walkway.

    1. I don’t even have kids, but I found myself yelling at them, “Ring the bell!” “Don’t open the door!” “Say trick-or-treat!” “Say thank you!” “Did you say thank you?” *sigh*

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