AKA: why mall trick-or-treating sucks
I’m a firm believer in having my kids trick-or-treat in the streets where we live. For me, Halloween night is more about being an active part of my neighbourhood than it is about candy. (Except Rockets – I love those!) For those of you still unsure where to spend the evening with your little princesses and superheroes, I offer up seven reasons why I think Halloween should be given the community building recognition it deserves.
1) Meet your extended neighbours
Halloween is one of the only times in the year that it’s normal to knock on the door of an unknown person, have that person happily open the door, have a bit of a conversation and leave with everyone feeling good about it. Take advantage of Halloween to get to know the faces of the people who live nearby.
2) Teach your kids that people are good
Kids have been taught “stranger danger,” but the truth is that most people are good people – they’re not child molestors who slip razors in Coffee Crisps. You might not know the person who lives two streets over, but that doesn’t mean they’re dangerous or bad or should be avoided. Halloween is the perfect time to make that point.
3) Meet other parents
For parents of young children walking around the neighbourhood with their little trick-or-treaters, it’s a chance to meet other parents doing the same thing. It’s another chance to talk to your neighbours, share a laugh and help to turn a bunch of people who live in the same geographic location into a community.
4) People like handing out candy
For lots of people, seeing kids come by in their costumes and handing out candy is the best part of Halloween. They carve their pumpkins and keep their houselights on hoping for a good turnout. It’s disappointing to go through all that effort if only a dozen kids show up. Keep not showing up and eventually people won’t make the effort, leading to dud neighbourhoods, leading to more kids going to the mall, and so on…
5) Malls are not a community
Shopping centres host trick-or-treating events because it gets a prime demographic through the doors to spend a couple hours window-shopping. They’re billed as “safe” alternatives, giving the false impression that neighbourhood trick-or-treating somehow isn’t safe (see #2). But retail stores are not your neighbours and the people handing out candy are being paid to do so. Taking your kids to the mall instead of exploring your neighbourhood sends your kids the message that commercial entities are preferred (more trusted?) than people down your street.
6) Better candy haul
Mall trick-or-treating is overcrowded, candy supplies run out early and to handle the mall crowds, stores often hand out single, small pieces of inexpensive candy. Lame. Neighbourhood trick-or-treating still offers the chance of the house that hands out FULL SIZE chocolate bars.
(off topic: The Switch Witch? Ew.)
7) Adjusting costumes for the weather is a Canadian tradition
The end of October is unpredictable. Sometimes the weather is positively lovely and poses no threat to costumes. But I do remember those bitterly cold Halloweens where costumes had to work around snowsuits and mittens. Some people claim that going to the mall means that kids get to show off their costumes they way they were intended. I’d argue that trick-or-treating in the cold is one of the iconic things about being Canadian and we should embrace it rather than hide from it.
Let me know what you think. Have I overlooked some reason why malls are a preferred choice over a neighbourhood? Does anyone have any fond, rosy childhood memories of that treat you got from your local Body Shop cashier? Or share your favourite neighbourhood trick-or-treating story.
See you in the streets!
You forgot another good reason: you get a chance to peek in to your neighbours’ houses and see how they decorated!
Awesome post Kiri! Thanks for laying it out so well.
Love this! I remember trick or treating through 3 neighbourhoods to get to this dentist’s place every year. He was famous for giving out really cool non-candy treats like mini playdough jars. You can’t get that collective kid-knowledge at the mall either!
We always hit the dentist’s house but only because he handed out those weird pink pills that would show you where there was still plaque on your teeth. Then we’d try to gross each other out by drooling the pink stuff all over ourselves.
Oh man! I loved those things! Do they even still make them?
I haven’t seen them since I was a kid. Next time I’m at the dentist I’m going to ask.
They’re “disclosing tablets” and yes we still make children chew them on occasion!!! LOL Never knew they were such a hit…. I’m going to give them out next year!!!
My dentist is just 3 floors down from me. I wonder if she’d give me some. Could make for a fun lunch break.
Great post! As an adult without kids, I love it when kids knock on my door. Every year, we have fewer and fewer kids. It makes me sad to think parents are choosing to take kids to the mall instead of knocking on my door.
Happy Halloween!
Great post, Kiri. I’m a little choked to be living in a high-rise this Halloween, as I don’t expect we’ll see any kids marching around the building knocking on doors. Loved seeing all the kids’ costumes when I was living in a house!
Spot on! I know I live in an awesome neighbourhood (Westmount) as I usually get at least 200 kids at the door. Halloween is one of the easiest but most effective community-builders around.
I so agree. We are taking our son out for the second year. We are also considering having him attend the elementary school here too. Maybe because we are old school, but we loved being connected to our neighbourhoods when we were kids and we want the same for him. The neighbours loved meeting him last year! (And we loved meeting them!)
As a former mall employee I always hated 2 things about mall-o-treating: 1) having to take time away from my true customers to hand out candy to unbehaved, fresh children with no manners, and 2) the overwhelming number of young adults out trick-or-treating with their SLEEPING INFANTS! Really? Go buy a bag of candy. That all being said, having just been slammed up in MA by our first nor’easter, I’m glad the malls are open tonight for trick-or-treating. Our local Halloween festivities have been postponed till Saturday.
Love it. Thank you. This is a bunch of stuff I always knew deep down, but was never able to put into words. Great work.
All excellent reasons, except I HATE handing out candy, so I head out with the kiddies because my has a bar set up for parents. I get a Bailey’s every year
Thanks for your comments everyone! It looks like a quiet Halloween on my street, unfortunately. But we’ll keep going out into the neighbourhood every year!
[...] Kiri W wrote a great post today with 7 reasons why you should take your kids out. [...]
[...] Kiri W wrote a great post today with 7 reasons why you should take your kids out. [...]
Some of the most memorable Halloweens I ever had growing up were bitterly cold ones when I lived out in the boonies near Morinville, at a very young age, 6, 7, 8 years old. I remember the year I was an angel, strapping the costume over my snowsuit. My aunt had left enough room just in case, and it was a good thing too. I have a photograph of my cousin and I bundled up to the nines under our costumes, our cheeks so red from the cold they were almost purple.
I trick or treated until I was 12 or 13, in my later years roaming freely through the neighbourhood I lived in in St. Albert. I think even then, in the early 90s, there was a sense of trust among neighbourhoods and communities that has eroded since then.
That being said, I live about 3 blocks away from West Edmonton Mall, and I have not handed out candy for the past 2 years. The last year my house handed out candy, we were lucky to get 10 kids in total. Then I ended up with a whole lotta extra sugar on my hands. Last year, and tonight, I think my doorbell rang once. The lights in the front of my house are off. I have heard very little activity from outside in the rest of the complex either. Not too much trick or treat chanting at all. And don’t even get me started on teenagers in their street clothes shoving their bags in my face expecting pity candy.
So I suppose that I prove your point about eventually it being more trouble than it’s worth. Which makes me sad, because I remember how much fun I used to have as a kid growing up in the 80s when every kid in the neighbourhood and their parents were out trick or treating and oohing and ahhing over each others’ costumes. Some of my best memories ever.
Awesome post, Kiri.
[...] isn’t about candy or costumes. It’s about community. A Canadian mom offers 7 Reasons Why Your Kids Should Trick or Treat in Your Neighborhood. For one: “For parents of young children walking around the neighbourhood with their little [...]