Sugar
Trick or treating has provided us with years of memories: mapping out the neighborhood to find the houses with the king-sized candy bars, neighbors jumping out of bushes with Jason masks on, and those stupid Halloween animatronics from Party City. The excitement of getting to trick or treat alone for the first time is one of the first tastes of freedom in childhood.
Right when you get home from school, the toddlers are already ringing doorbells, so you frantically open a bag of candy and pour it in a random bowl at the bottom of your cabinet that only gets any use on Halloween night. You get to see all your friends from school in their costumes, trying to guess what they are if it is a homemade costume.
When the sun sets, you have to put on a puffy jacket that ruins your costume, but keeps you warm as the fall chill surrounds you. The neighborhood at night seems so much bigger, ominous, and unfamiliar. Suddenly, all those streets that you knew so well become endless trails that seem to have no direction. All the houses begin to blend together, and soon you end up at a house you already visited. Trying to remember which houses give out the best candy in prior years helps you save time and avoid the houses that give out candy corns, or nothing at all.
Finally, your group ends up at someone’s house to take inventory of your candy, and let the trading begin! The bargaining for your favorite candy is frustrating, but so worth it in the end. The friends that like chocolate make deals with the ones that prefer a fruity flavor, and you all go home with a stomach ache and a three-month supply of candy. If you ration efficiently, it can possibly last until April.
When teenagers enter high school, trick or treating is quickly deemed uncool and replaced with Halloween parties. However, there is no shame in free candy.
Spice
Trick or Treating has always been the star of the show for Halloween. And sure, it was fun when we were like 9. But honestly, if you weigh the actual experience of Trick or Treating vs. literally anything else you could do on Halloween, it is the inferior choice.
Trick or Treating might be more fun if Halloween was in August, or even September because it becomes so incredibly cold. Not to mention the inevitable rain that soaks the bottom of your costume. And of course, there’s always your mom telling you to put on a jacket. Then, you have to explain to her that it will absolutely ruin your costume and at that point there’s no point in wearing a costume at all.
If somehow you do convince your mom to let you out of the house without a jacket on, you are then suffering the consequences of the cheap, itchy, 30 dollar costume you got out of one of those magazines to keep you warm for the rest of the night.
Plus—there are other options!
Staying in with your friends on Halloween and watching scary movies with 3 or 4 of your friends is honestly such a warmer, less stressful, more fun idea. There are so, so, so many horror movies it’s honestly impossible that there is one you have not seen.
If you think Trick or Treating is essential to Halloween, so are the movies Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. If you’re looking for something scarier, Hereditary, the Saw movies, any of the Insidious movies, and the list goes on, and on, and on. If you are not one to like scary movies, there’s always the Disney Channel movies like, my personal favorite, Hallweentown, The Nightmare Before Christmas, the new and the old Haunted Mansion movies, and Girl vs. Monster. Again, the list goes on.
And if you are really worried about the candy situation, worse comes to worse, you buy a 10 dollar, 2 pound bag of candy and call it a day.
