Although Halloween is over, Maher is kvetching on Real Time about “safetyism” rules, including curfews that end trick-or-treating at 7 pm or even 5 pm! But then he reminisces about Halloween when he was a kid and the joys of running around on your own. Now, of course, kids rarely go trick-or-treating unaccompanied by parents, even though it’s safer now than it was when Maher and I were kids (I, too, was a “free range kid”).
The spiel continues with the Maher detailing the bad effects of spending a lot of time on the internet—something that results from kids not being allowed to roam on their own.(62% of kids 12 and under have never walked or biked anywhere without an adult, and 50% of parents won’t even let their kids roam to another aisle in the grocery store). He describes an alternative called “trunk or treat”, a fun-killer that you’ll have hear about by watching the short video below.
Ah, the joys of roaming free, biking off alone to see friends after school! That is dead and gone.
But wait, there’s more :
Some towns run a stand-alone Trick-Or-Treat on a night in advance of October 31st in which local businesses get tricked-or-treated. It’s a nice idea.
Consequence is, on the actual trick-or-treat day, there’s lower turnout.
A big part of the trick-or-treat fun is running around in the dark and “bumping into” people you know, but hey they’re in a costume! “Hey, join us, let’s go over to that crazy looking house with all the lights and people in front!” Wild, silly fun!
It is not fun when you’re the only kid within sight braving the dark front yards and windows and knocking on doors. Even worse “going with” your parent.
Related:
[from a chart title ]:”More Households, Fewer Children And Fewer Doors Handing Out Candy”
https://www.thenewsindata.com/stories/there-are-14-fewer-potential-trick-or-treaters-per-household-than-in-2010
I had to deal with that problem when I split from my ex, and we shared the kids half-time (aged 8, 7, and 7). I live in Vancouver, and was renting an apartment right across the road from a mall. The kids had a sleepover with a friend, and in the morning I gave them some money, and sent the four of them across the road to buy some candy. When my ex heard that I let them go to the mall alone, she freaked out saying that “They could have been kidnapped!”. Not only do I think they were old enough to go to the mall alone, but I looked up the stats, and stranger kidnapping didn’t even register as an issue in our area. When I was 7, I was a free-range kid, and I refuse to live my (or my kids) lives in fear, particularly when it is much safer now than it was when I was a kid.
For some reason, parents now believe that everyone on the street is a pedophile. Stranger Danger is all around us, they think, and the kids, too, are internalizing the same lesson.
In our neighborhood, kids came to the house between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM. The younger ones—toddlers, really—came with their parents, who watched from the end of the driveway. (It was the same when I was a child 60 years ago, in a town 3000 miles away from where I live now.) Older kids arrived later without parental accompaniment. Pets wore costumes, too! (We refrained from feeding them candy.) Revelers were unbelievably polite, asking us how many pieces of candy they were allowed to take when we held out the bowl for their inspection. (We told them to take a handful.)
Elaborate decorations adorned many of the houses, with skeletons of people and pets outside on the lawns, complex lighting displays in abundance, and Jack-O-Lanterns outside where they could be seen (and vandalized). Some of the skeletons were twelve feet high. People put even decorations on their roofs!
We gave away about two pounds of candy. We had at least ten pounds on hand—as we do every year. (You can guess where the rest of the candy goes.) It was fun. The kids had fun. The parents had fun. None of the decorations were vandalized. No child was assaulted. Halloween is still a great tradition and it’s almost certainly safer than it has ever been.