When the doorbell rings on Halloween, I won’t ask a pirate to remove his patch so I can see who he really is. Chances are I wouldn’t know him if he did. Part of the lure of Halloween has always been that bit of anonymity, but these days it’s due more to automatic garage door openers and privacy fences than to costumes or masks or makeup. We just don’t know our neighbors the way we used to.
When my 15-year-old and 12-year-old take off on their Halloween adventures with friends this year, they’ll leave home without me, but not without instructions. I’ll put them on trick-or-treat high alert. Say thank you; don’t eat anything. Have fun; don’t talk to strangers. And keep your cell phone on.
I think my mom sent me out the door with a heartfelt yet simple, “Be careful.”
For most kids, gone are the days of carefree side-stepping from neighbor to neighbor, as I did in my city neighborhood growing up. Gone, too, is the comfort of being invited inside many tiny foyers to get warm and sneak a homemade treat, something to gobble up right away without fear.
There was no way to keep tabs on trick-or-treaters back then, unless your parents happened to corner you as you dumped your candy-stuffed pillowcase on the kitchen table — before heading out into the night for more.
Today Halloween is no longer an all-neighborhood, all-night quest, even in the greenest suburbs or the most luxurious city high-rises. Parents want kids to stay within a discernible radius if they’re out on their own. And if a treat isn’t hermetically sealed, it goes directly into the garbage.
We trust technology to keep us in the loop and to keep our candy out of the trash can. For most of us, that’s easier than trusting our mysterious neighbors.
The decreasing familiarity in the faces of Halloween is two-sided. Not only is it strange for me to think that my kids are receiving treats from strangers — breaking one of the cardinal rules of childhood — it’s odd to give candy to kids I don’t know. It’s not as much fun as when I sat on the steps of my childhood home giving out candy to every baby, child and teenager in the neighborhood, knowing most of them by name.
In recent years I’ve seen kids pile out of a mini-van at the end of my street and descend like cicadas onto every well-lit house on the block. I don’t blame these “dropped-off trick-or-treaters” for coming to a kid-friendly area in search of full-size candy bars. But I modify my candy distribution.
I give better candy to the few kids I know. Cute little kids get more candy than teenagers, even though my son is a teen, and I want him to get the good stuff. Early trick-or-treaters get one piece, later trick-or-treaters get more, but hardly anyone gets the candy my family likes the most. And, I confess, I recycle the unwanted candy from my kids’ bags into the trick-or-treat bowl.
If I don’t know you, you might even end up with pretzels.
But it’s not only the faces of Halloween that have become unrecognizable; it’s also the day’s entire rhythm. Nowadays Halloween is a daylight affair, starting with innocuous fall festivities in elementary schools that merge into trick-or-treating as soon as the school bell rings.
When I was growing up, we came home from school and waited impatiently, like vampires, for the sun to go down. When the hour struck, we headed out with our pent-up energy and bouncing flashlights, hurtling into the spooky night of endless candy and excitement.
Kids today couldn’t do this, even if we would let them.
In 2006 more than 125 Chicago suburbs imposed local trick-or-treating hours — or curfews. Only two towns permitted trick-or-treating after 8 p.m. Most cut it off at 7 p.m.
Sunset is at 5:47 p.m. on Oct. 31 this year. At that rate our pumpkins and poltergeists and Power Rangers, even our barely disguised teens, will have just an hour and 13 minutes to ring doorbells in the dark.
And when kids do get home, ready to take inventory, how many parents scrutinize the candy not for tampering, but for evil trans fats?
My kids don’t know any different, of course. A daytime, fully monitored, closely examined Halloween is still Halloween to them. It’s an organized outing, not a free-for-all. It’s a play date with a sugar buzz.
Trick or treating until 7 p.m. is standard, and they don’t expect to know someone in every house they go to. It does not detract from the fun of collecting the loot and being with friends, of counting and sorting the candy, of eating just one piece too many, and of choosing what goes into the brown-bag lunch the very next day.
It’s just the voice in my head that wishes it were different. But it’s really just like any other day. We’re conscious of what our kids say, what they eat, and a little suspicious of where they go and whom they know. Doing something different in today’s world? Now that would be scary.
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AmyNathan5@aol.com
