As tonight is Halloween, most of the blogs I looked at were posting their kids in costumes. I thought I would share my point of view on Halloween.
There was a time several years ago, back when I was in my early twenties, I thought a lot of Halloween as a fun time for little kids. My thoughts began to change as more and more older kids started showing up at the door. Our municipality started scheduling our Trick or Treat nights around the other local towns. Sixty to eighty kids became one hundred, then two hundred. We went from older teenagers to van loads of kids being dropped off from the open sliding doors of vans with out of state plates.
Back in the days before my bitterness over the greedyness of parents, I decorated my house with spider webs, glowing eyed skull candelabras and even a spooky music and some fog. I did a haunted arcade the couple of years I ran the game room at the mall. It went over great. I actually like doing that stuff. But alas, the whole neighborhood has gotten fed up with the enourmous influx of folks from outside the area. Now, we all go out for dinner at a local eatery during the hours of Trick or Treat. We make up treats for the kids in the neighborhood. We're not trying to be nasty to the kids, especially our own neighbors. It just gets a wee bit expensive to feed candy to half the tri-county area.
Tomorrow, we go back to being a normal lil burg preparing for the holidays to come.
There was a time several years ago, back when I was in my early twenties, I thought a lot of Halloween as a fun time for little kids. My thoughts began to change as more and more older kids started showing up at the door. Our municipality started scheduling our Trick or Treat nights around the other local towns. Sixty to eighty kids became one hundred, then two hundred. We went from older teenagers to van loads of kids being dropped off from the open sliding doors of vans with out of state plates.
Back in the days before my bitterness over the greedyness of parents, I decorated my house with spider webs, glowing eyed skull candelabras and even a spooky music and some fog. I did a haunted arcade the couple of years I ran the game room at the mall. It went over great. I actually like doing that stuff. But alas, the whole neighborhood has gotten fed up with the enourmous influx of folks from outside the area. Now, we all go out for dinner at a local eatery during the hours of Trick or Treat. We make up treats for the kids in the neighborhood. We're not trying to be nasty to the kids, especially our own neighbors. It just gets a wee bit expensive to feed candy to half the tri-county area.
Tomorrow, we go back to being a normal lil burg preparing for the holidays to come.
