Awareness of the outside world. “Remember: foods vary in nutritional value, but they hold no moral value.” YLE: Halloween candy: A smart guide for parents, Jetelina & Maisano, Oct 29, 2025. [Spooky Season]
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I don’t remember so much Satanic panic surrounding Halloween.
Local churches advertise Trunk or Treat. I think this is car-to-car trick or treating in a parking lot. Notice the name difference. I’ve gone on about the misinterpretation of Halloween before. [Halloween Rant]
My point here is that I don’t remember this much noise when I was trick-or-treating as a kid in the 1970s. It was a small holiday. Candy. Costumes. Pumpkins. Orange UNICEF boxes. Done. Moving on.
Perhaps it is personal. When I was trick or treating, I lived in a city. There was one girl in our class who always had the Halloween party. We would trick to treat up and down the floors of the apartment building she lived in. Looking back, people must have been expecting us. They would have a light on or perhaps decorations out, the adults would know which doors to stop at, and the residents would be ready with candy and pennies. Now I live in the Southern US. Religion may or may not be the same as elsewhere, but the delivery style is louder. They may have been making these noises all along. I just wasn’t around to hear them.
Perhaps it is practical. How would you trick to treat in a rural area? Drive from house to house? Gathering at a central location makes sense logistically. Around here, churches are centers of the communities. Are they gathering at a church to shelter from Satanic influences? Or are they gathering there because it is where they are in community? Not just churches. My local library is having a trick or treat gathering. I donated notebooks with spooky covers.
Perhaps it is perception. In the 70s, mass media was radio and network television. Unless it was on Bugs Bunny or an episode of M*A*S*H, kid me would not have been exposed to it. If a local church was having a satanic panic, the reach would have been flyers posted around the neighborhood. Now, media is 24/7, comes at us from many angles, and from all over. We know far more about what people elsewhere are up to.
Some events are clearly historical moments. [Witness to History, Where Were You When?]
What about other moments? Beyond the obvious events, how do you know if you are witness historical change or seeing something that was always there but you had not noticed?
What is history? What is you?
Onwards!
Katherine
Great perspective!
Thank you.
Mom
Good perspective about Halloween today, or All Hallow’s Eve. I grew up in a rural area, and our parents drove us from home to home, or farm to farm. If houses were somewhat close together, they’d let us out at the first house, and be waiting in the car at the last house. Houses with a porch or door light on, meant that we could stop there.
Like your memories, Halloween was a holiday, but not the super-duper-big-commercial-deal it is today. Our church might have had a Halloween party, where we wore costumes, played games, got some candy? bobbed for apples? Memory is fuzzy here, but I recall something like this. (Trunk or Treat is still a new invention.)
Most local towns had Halloween parades, at night, with marching bands, and judges that voted on the (walking) costumed entrants, and crowds along the streets clapping, cheering. The prizes were … drum roll … real, silver dollar coins. This was a big event for the town.
Most kids, with their parents, MADE THEIR OWN COSTUMES! Buying costumes — except for masks, and plastic pumpkin buckets for candy — seemed like cheating. This was fun, going through discarded clothes at home, or creating who-knows-what from parts of clothes, bed sheets, hats, and more.
I still have trouble when I hear today’s parents talk about buying costumes — however pretty or spooky — from Amazon. I just smile and nod.
Well, yesterday I bought a small bag of chocolate – caramel candy (individually wrapped) at Costco, just in case I have Halloween visitors, but my neighborhood is mostly non-kids (grown or not here yet).
My address is not on a Treat Map, which means hordes of unknown kids. A Treat Map? Does this mean that I’m a Grinch?
I should put a pumpkin or two out front …. fall chrysanthemums if I really get motivated. MM
I grew up in a suburb, we walked house to house, without parents. Ahh, innocent times.