Ask Lemmy

Trick or treating is alive and well in places where you can walk safely, and houses aren't too far apart from each other. The problem is too many places in the US don't fit that description.

Hasn't died here.

Trick or Treating has definitely gone down in my neighborhood.

The neighborhood is 21 years old and I posit that is the reason. A lot of new families, like us, moved in 20 years ago and now the kids are all grown up. My kids are 18 and 16 respectively and have not gone out on Halloween for a few years. The family right next door to us have sons that are a bit older than ours.

Edinburgh, Scotland - we had quite a lot of T/Ters (or guisers, as it's often better known here, among older generations anyway). Maybe 10-15 groups. A lot of families round our way and we usually have a fairly busy night, so no change from normal :-)

We're in a downtown-adjacent neighborhood of our decently-sized city and we saw plenty of kids this year (6-8 in small groups and a herd of 15 or so). Other years when we lived a bit further out, we didn't get as many but still a few (usually 5-10).

I live in an urban area and we run out of candy in two hours there are so many kids.

ICE, the chances pedophiles, kidnappers have definitely suppressed halloween numbers. also because of covid too.

No kids around. I'm in a what should be a solidly middle class neighborhood except its like 80% retired folk. Just a handful of families with kids.

No trick or treaters in my neighborhood this year. Some teens were out and about making trouble (the fun, to be expected kind), but it seemed that parents took to other areas for the actual candy quests.

Got some of my decorations stolen tho, which brought a smile to mine. Reminds me of being a little hoodlum in my own younger days lol

Steady uptick in trick or treaters over the last 3 years. I think the neighborhood demographic is shifting to having more kids in the area.

We have a pretty large population of new immigrants in the area too, many with kids, and I think they weren't super familiar with the concept of Halloween when they arrived. I mean... it does sound kinda insane if you didn't grow up with it.

But I think they've realized that yes, it is a real thing... strangers will happily shovel candy at your children when they knock on a door.

Makes me very happy, it's such a community building event. I was explaining to my newish-to-canada wife that as a kid it's almost better than Christmas. As fun as Christmas is, as a kid you're still the passenger. Halloween you actually have some agency... what are you going to dress up as? Who do you want to trick or treat with? What route do you want to take? What candy do you want to barter with your friends afterwards?

Nobody my age can afford a house. I just got lucky with an okay job. All my immediate neighbours are old people. No kids.

That was true for the first 7 years here. I'd get 0 to 3 kids max. Then suddenly last year it's shot up to 30+.

I figure that means as old ppl are dying, landlords are buying. The houses aren't any cheaper yet, Carney.

We had maybe 3 small groups come by. Very young kids with parents. For our kids, we went to a downtown event where businesses handed out candy. I liked that it was pretty dense with costumes and a down/back loop so we got to see lots of costumes and run into other families we knew. It's definitely changed and moved away from neighborhoods but there's also a feedback loop. Fewer kids, fewer houses passing out candy, fewer kids. Now I have to figure out what to do with 95% of a Costco candy bag

Halloween never really was a thing in my country. At high times, there were three or four groups during the evening. This year only one.

My area was full of trick or treaters. I saw more homemade costumes. Had some teens in the spirit, lots of adults, too. My kid got to hang out with some friends and trick or treat.

However, I didn't dress up this year. Too much to do. My daughter's costume was all stuff we already had. Didn't decorate because, again, too much to do.

Our small rural town still does it, police and fire shut down a few blocks so the families can wander around safely. We also do Trunk or Treat too mostly for younger kids. One thing that has died out is families going around to homes outside of town limits. Lots of folks in costume in town at least!

I went walking yesterday during trick or treating to a party at a bar 2 miles away. I saw a few groups of kids, I walked through a business street area and all the restaurants and bars and stores were giving out candy to kids with their parents. Every group had a parent but they were mostly 8-14. Definitely wasn't as busy as it was when I went as a kid 15 years ago, even though I lived in a small town. Also not a lot of houses were participating in giving out candy but I moved to a city so maybe that's it

No kids Trick-of-Treating showed up at my door yesterday, but holy shit it was loud outside. People (adults) were lining up stretching around the block to get into some event, I guess, in an adjacent building. Lots of yelling / very loud talking, honking, etc. Bunch of police sirens at like 3am or so. Some Friday nights are kind of like that normally around here, but this one was extra rowdy.

Downtown area of a city on the US West Coast.

Lots of kids in the neighborhoods across town wherre the families now live. In the part of town where I am where it is all rental units filed with childless professionals and retirement homes for affluent snowbirds, there was no trick-or-treating. My husband grew up here and in this part of town it used to be crawling with kids in the 60's and 70's. Then again, that was before rich people "discovered" our city and snapped up all the affordable rentals and converted them to luxury condos.

Definitely a lot quieter here as well - we live in a neighborhood in a rural town. Not many options to go trick or treating here. We did get maybe 40-50 kids last night, but in past years (definitely before Covid), it was more like a few hundred. People would drive their kids from the area here and let them loose. We had to have the cops drive around the neighborhood to make sure everyone was safe. Definitely different last night. Still lots of little kids, but very few teens. Used to be the other way around. We have lots of candy left ...

Kind of yes... When I was a kid (born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s) we went all around the neighborhood.

These days you can put your light on, it won't matter. People drive their kids to the rich neighborhoods and trick-or-treat there.

Why the HOAs put up with it is beyond me.

Our town had the usual in town loop (Downtown is a 4x4 block grid) all the buisnesses handing out candy a couple of the bars haning mini shots for the parents, etc, with main street closed off, a band playing, fire dept, police, and some of the bigger buisnesses without a storefront down town staging their Halloween stuff in there. There was also the usual lead in- to town (its fairly traditional for all the houses to have candy starting about 1 mile out of town on the main road in- often with the caretakers/ property manager cos doing candy on their properties on the behalf of the rich owners who only visit seasonally)

There were also 4 different neighborhoods sort of actively advertising they were 'open' for trick or treaters- wirh residents telling everyone to make sure to hit up their blocks. 2 of them were blocks with a sort of critical mass of young families, and 2 were somw of the larger, denser areas so better for foot traffic.

Our towns kind of difficult demographics wise though- in addition to the whole young families having trouble affording homes, and aging population problems felt everywhere, were a seasonal beach resort town, so probably 60% of the houses are closed for the season by Halloween.

I think my house is too far down a seemingly dead court for most kids to bother. We got less than 5 this past Halloween, but I've heard the houses at the start of the street get tons of kids.

We had one group of three kids and their parents, that was it. I blame the rain storm. We got hit with an "atmospheric river" that started about 2 bours before it got dark. 😭

I mean compared to when I was young its come down massively. It got sorta wierd when you had parents driving down the street one house at a time and the kids get out and back in and then you had people coming from far places if your place was known for handing out good stuff. Im in a condo now so it just does not really happen as its just not as accessible as single family homes. My place is also on this busy triangle that is surrounded by busy streets with no side streets.

I stopped bothering like two or three years ago. Number of years in a row before that I had zero trick-or-treaters so just kind of felt like why bother anymore?

We still get some. Maybe 20 groups of between 2-7 kids, all were with parents, all seemed under 11 years old. No roving groups of older kids this year. We do have kids in our neighborhood, and a couple of apartment complexes nearby with more so there is no way most of them came out but it seemed more little kids this year than last. I don't live in the suburbs, but in a residential neighborhood in the city.

I was in costume because we had a party. Olivia Octavius. And had the pleasure of threatening a wee spiderman, which made his parents laugh but he didn't understand.

Fewer kids on the street, they've outgrown the trick-or-treating phase. And with how expensive it is to own a property now, I don't expect young couples to buy a house here anytime soon.

The volume of salt and sugar in my front room would tend to make me believe, trick or treating is alive and well.

Jokes aside. We live in rural Canada. It's so popular it was moved to Thursday night this year because of a massive rainstorm last night.

First year in my neighborhood 10 or so years ago they went pretty hard, but the streets were completely packed with cars that were obviously from outside the neighborhood and it seems like everyone stopped the following year

Jays game.... Streets were empty after 8

Had to leave my neighborhood to trick or treat with my kiddo. She made out like a bandit.

Maybe it is the fear of being shot for stepping on someone else's property. Many people with kids also can't afford to live in a house, and apartment complexes don't do door to door trick or treating.

The past decade or so where I live, almost without fail, there's a huge rain or thunderstorm on Halloween that makes it absolutely miserable to trick-or-treat. You have to wear a jacket and if you wear face paint it just runs and you can't see. The very last time I went out about 8 years ago, the storm was so bad it nearly ripped a chainlink fence off its posts and the people giving out candy just dumped their whole bowl in my bag because they knew nobody else would come.