Damn, I spent almost $50 on candy because I always hated Trick-or-Treating and getting crappy candy, one teeny tiny fun size bar or pennies. That and I don't want my property egged or shaving creamed.

Then again, Halloween is one of the few holidays we celebrate, so I guess we're making up for our lack of Easter, Christmas or Thanksgiving spending.

@kalaratri: There are 19 steps up to my parents' front door, and the houses are decently far apart in our neighborhood (at least for the area - the lots are about an acre each, as opposed to a quarter of an acre the next street over), so my mom has always handed out king size bars. Mmmmm leftovers!

Ugh, this makes me want a king-sized package of Reese's cups right now...

I definitely don't recommend using last year's candy corn, even if the bag was never opened. I made the mistake last week of trying it. I consider myself fortunate that no teeth were chipped or cracked in the process.

Probably the most frustrating aspect with Halloween, for me at least, is how much candy to buy. My neighborhood has a good number of kids living in it, but there's never been any consistency from year to year, in how many kids ring the bell. Some years, I'll buy 7 bags of snack-sized candy bars, and have 3+ left. In other years, I've run out.
Now, when I was in my 20's, this wasn't a problem as I'd just gradually snack on the leftovers until gone. I tried that last year. By February, I still had 2 bags left, so I gave them to a teacher friend of mine who gave them to her students.

Do you get them starting a week early, in the US? Some chancers round here try for several days either side of Halloween. I don't mind making some toffee or cheesy bats (cheese straw recipe, but done with a bat-shaped biscuit cutter), but I only ever dole stuff out on the night.
Everyone else gets politely told when Halloween is. One lot said that wasn't fair because they were going on holiday over Halloween. Cheeky sods!

Am I the only person not into Halloween.

I've noticed a real decline in Trick-or-Treaters. When I was a kid everyone went, and usually for more than an hour at a go. 6:30-8:30 was prime candy time for my 4th grade self. Then we'd get home, empty the pillowcases, and my mom would "inspect" for safety. She was just stashing the wunderbars and caramilks. The houses we knew gave out full cans of pop or chocolate bars got talked about like legend at school the next day and we'd then beg parents to take us to that neighborhood the next year.

I did not get a single kid at my door last year and I even bought a small amount of candy. My friends with houses have reported no kids coming to their doors last year either. We had more trick-or-treaters at work, and I'm on the 2nd floor of a semi-secluded office building.

it was always a day i greatly looked forward to. :(

I usually spend $35-50 on candy, and frankly I don't expect that to change much this year, saving a few bucks on this isn't going to help my budget much.

What the National Federation of Retailers should be really worried about is the holidays. I plan to cut back about 90% of my spending this year. I know I'm not alone.

@Cat_In_A_Hat: Darn comment submitted before I was done. Halloween was never fun for me as a child because my mother hated trick or treating and my father believed celebrating ghost's and gouls was equivalent to devil worshiping. Also I was fat child and found finding fun costumes very difficult. I guess this will change when I have children. I do volunteer at a Halloween charity event every year for underprivileged kids. This is probably the only reason I look forward to Halloween.

I always buy a bag of candy just in case kids come, but nobody ever do, so I always end up eating them myself. I've decided that it's a bad idea to buy any candy at all this year.

@kalaratri: The drummer from Styx lived in my neighbor and you know what he gave away? 1 Hershey kiss per kid! I'm 23 and still a little bit bitter about that! I continue to judge a person's success by the candy they give out on Halloween.

@Cat_In_A_Hat: I'm not too crazy about the panhandling aspect of Halloween. Who comes up with these rules?

The problem is that everyone is so afraid of everyone else that parents aren't letting their kids wander around trick or treating like they used to. I used to (10 to 15 years ago) wander around my neighborhood, and then have my mom drive me to friend's neighborhoods, so I and my friends could wander around while the parents all hung out together. News flash - I never got hurt, and neither did anyone I know. However, my parents have seen a great reduction in the number of kids coming around, and most of the ones they see are people who are driving their kids around to their friends houses. As people see less demand for candy at their doors, they'll buy less.

@Ratty: My block consisted of a church, a funeral home and 4 houses: we never got any kids trick or treating when I was little. I grew up dreaming of the day where I would get to open the door and pass out treats! Probably not this year tho, my apartment complex is mostly old people.

@Skipweasel: In some areas of the US the town will decide to move Halloween to the nearest Friday or Saturday. Cheaters.

@calquist: What I'd see if you could do is encourage people to have their grandkids come over. I mean, come on, who doesn't like giving out candy to eager kids?

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday. My homemade penguin costume (black sweatshirt with white felt belly, orange felt beak and giant Styrofoam eyes will be making it's 3rd appearance... even though it probably should be retired consider how much was spilled on it at the bars last year.

@Ratty: It usually depends on the area, how many kids there are and how paranoid the parents are. Where we used to live, we'd get few neighborhood Trick-or-Treaters but the mall and schools would set up for them and there would be a ton of kis there.

@kalaratri: Right, but we never did that when I was a kid save for extremely bad weather. We're talking snow dumps and -15 or colder. In which case we had the then world's largest mall, with 600+ stores, each set up to hand out candy... yeah.

I'm fairly close to a middle and elementary school so I'm not sure what the deal is. Even when I was a block away from an elementary school, maybe 4 or 5 kids in a night. When I was younger it would sometimes be three figures. be it the small towns i lived in or in a crappy part of a big city, swarms of kids.

@Ratty: do you live in a neighborhood with pretty spread out detached houses? My townhouse neighborhood of about 15 townhouses (most with no kids) gets 100's of trick-or-treaters, most jumping in and out of their parents mini-van in between the 10 ft jump from one set of townhouses to the next. The parents stay in the car the whole time. Makes me wonder how many of them will be complaining at work the next day about how much weight they are going to gain from eating so much of their kids candy. I can understand the feeling of more safety in a small, well lit townhouse neighborhood, but it still makes me sad to see the parents being lazy and not even getting out of the car ( and it's not for lack of parking in our neighborhood)

@K-Bo: No, it is an apartment complex with 700 and change units, and a LOT of kids living in/near here. The way the apartments are here is the doors face the outside like houses. There's no inside hallways and doors and things like that.

For the past few years I've turned off all the house lights and headed towards the mall. You're not allowed to give out candy there (the merchants take care of that) and the trick-or-treaters parade past me as I sip my coffee.

@Ratty:
I'm convinced that Trick-Or-Treating is dead.
Us kids of the 80's had the best go at it.

Icon by icon, our youth is dying. :(

Am I the only person who thinks that $50 on halloween is NOWHERE NEAR their normal Halloween budget?
I blow almost $200 a year on Halloween.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I still remember the houses where they handed out full-size candy bars. One guy always gave money. The best ever was the creepy house down the block where Granny dressed up as a witch and gave out cups of hot chocolate from a caldron over an open fire. This was during the height of the cyanide and razor blade scare.

I always dress up and give out full-size candy bars because I remember how much I loved it as a child. I have been Elvira, a zombie, a ghost, Paul Stanley and Alice Cooper. I think I might try Blackie Lawless this year. I buy boxes of candy at Costco when they have a coupon.

Kids will get off their skateboards and walk past my house so they don't annoy me. Do I get points off because I have ulterior motives?

My daughter will make out like a bandit regardless. Her grandparents live in a fairly rich neighborhood. We will walk about 2.5 miles total and she will easily get at least 4 pounds of candy. I also will make out myself as I do get my share from the please take one bowl.

I take only one but I make sure I only take one piece of each kind.

The title of this post has me pondering about regionalisms; how did the rhyme go where you grew up? Where I was it sang:

Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!
Not too big, not too small, Just the size of Montreal!

we sang that at every door when they took more than a few seconds to open. I realize it won't be this way in, say, Pasadena. but what is it?

$50 is what I spend on myself for candy during the post Halloween clearance days :P Get 6 months worth of candy for half price.

@Cat_In_A_Hat: I'm not fond of Halloween, but I like candy.

@Ratty:

Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!
If you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear!

An alternate version was similar to yours, but ended with "Just the size of Penn-Can Mall." Which, considering the severely dead state of that mall today, tells you how old I am.

[www.deadmalls.com]
[www.penncanmall.com]

Man, I love Deadmalls.com.

I'll go to BJ's and get 36-count boxes of Hershey bars and (Snickers or Three Musketeers). Each kid gets one of each. Any leftovers and I'll, well, when I was employed, I'd bring 'em into work. Now, hmmm? What to do? What to do?

I have noticed a decline in Trick-or-Treaters as well, even in my townhome development where people would always drop their kids off to "mooch" off of us since it's easier to go house hopping. It seems parents are locking down their kids more for whatever reason. Also, fewer and fewer neighbors seem to not give out candy either for financial reasons or work schedules. "Fun" seems to be taken away from youth, unless you count plopping in front of the TV and playing Xbox.

@kalaratri: in manchester NH halloween is always the last sunday in october @ noon....

Did anyone else read the topic and think this was going to be a story about kids getting crack for Halloween?

Kids, come to our house. We will be spending more than this on candy this year. For the last 3 years we have been cheap on candy and have had to start rationing it out halfway through the night. We can no longer stand the look of disappointment on a 5-year olds face when we drop one tootsie roll into his batman head.

@Ratty: It was always fun for me too. EVERY kid went out for Halloween. We're in a family friendly neighborhood so we do get a good number of kids, but nothing like it used to be. Is it more dangerous out there these days? I doubt it. I just think we're paranoid freaks now.

I stopped buying candy because in 7 years, I had THREE kids come to my house. Maybe that drop isn't because of the economy or anything, but because people are tired of buying expensive kid-size candy for themselves?

Until maybe 10 years ago, the only thing you would see in stores, maybe a few weeks before Halloween, was candy and costumes.

But then they started trying to turn it into a full-bore clone of Xmas, with all sorts of expensive decorations for your house like plastic tombstones and inflatable haunted houses.

So my guess is that a lot of this downturn is people coming to their senses after the past few years of retailer Halloween hype.

@calquist: Our street is just as bad. We've been here ten years, and no one has ever rung our bell. Ten houses on a dead-end country road not near anything. The few kids here go to nearby Clinton (NY), where the trick-or-treating is about as close to the good old days as it gets. Now that ours is 20 and about to leave for the Air Force, we really miss Halloween.

@cash_da_pibble: Come to Clinton, New York. You'll swear it was 1970 again.

@kalaratri: I'm with you on this. It was such a disappointment to get handfuls of fun-size candy at every house. Now that I give out treats, I always make sure to give out good stuff. We make little gift bags - one set for young kids and one set for older kids. Along with lots of different kinds of candy we throw in stickers, themed-pencils, small toys, and other stuff. We don't get that many kids, so it's worth it.

@Moosehawk: Like anyone has the money for THAT.

Halloween was fun when I was a kid. We were allowed to do our trick or treating after dark.

I spend more on Halloween, mainly because we give out lite-rope necklaces. We moved to this house just over a year ago, and hardly any kids came. I still have a leftover tube, and I only hope our rep grows and more kids come by. Otherwise, I'll have to figure out a way to use them for Christmas.

@Cat_In_A_Hat: Why didn't you go as a pumpkin? A pumpkin costume was the de facto costume for chubby kids.

@farcedude: I think this is partially the case. I went trick or treating a ton when I was a kid, but I haven't seen kids around my parents' neighborhood go trick or treating.

I think if kids aren't going to be allowed to wander together, or even supervised, there are churches and museums that pick up the slack.

Here in the DC area, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Annex in Chantilly puts on Air and Scare. It's a pretty fun event with a ton of candy. And kids get to see all the planes like usual, but they can dress up in costumes and get candy. I'm an adult, but it was a lot of fun last year.

The Christian Fundiepoohs around here force their brainwashed spawn to go "Trunk or Treat"ing in the damn church parking lots. Oh, Joy! How fun is that? They get to go from car to car in brightly lite parking lots with all the parents watching their little angels get candy. The "fun" is over in 20 minutes and then it time for them to go home, plop their fat "saved" asses down in a recliner and complain how evil the world, our government, the city, the neighborhood, their next door neighbors are....and then think their dog may secretly be a demon.
Thank the Invisible Cloud Being I was born in a time when we could go out in the dark with our friends, with no parents and go house to house. Some of my best memories are from Halloween in the late 60s and 70s.

@Laura Northrup: I like the ideology of the holiday, but I view it as a kids' experience. The influx of slutgear costumes and dick-n-fart-joke costumes for adults seems really inappropriate to me.

Granted, the Fallopian Swim Team costumes are kind of funny.

@vorpal_hamster: Thank you for being that person. And, now, you inspired me to do the same. I also remember the days of the full sized candy bars, and how excited my sister and I were when we dumped out our pillow cases to see 10 or 20 of them. These kids today have no idea what they're missing.

I can already see how my son doesn't get too excited to get a sack full of fun-sized minis. (And, neither do I when I rummage through his candy.)