Rotten Tricksters

I’ve always loved Halloween.  Before having children, I started a rather elaborate home decorating tradition.   I’m not talking a few outdoor lights and pumpkins, I’m talking ‘beings’ I created by hand, including three witches with a cauldron, ‘Freddy’, a werewolf, a mummy and more.  Throw in some skeleton lights, shrunken heads, and other festive twists, and the outdoor decorating is complete.  It’s a fair amount of work for one day (unlike decorating for the ’season’ of Christmas), but it’s worth it for the excitement and fun it gives our children – alright, me too.

Until our children reached the trick or treating years, I’d host Halloween parties and be available for handing out the treats.  Now, our girls are running door to door, and of course hubby and I want to be part of those memories instead of tending a ringing doorbell.  So, this year we left the house for about an hour and put out a box with assorted treats and a note saying “please help yourself to a reasonable amount of treats“.  In other words “don’t run off with it all“!  We don’t get a lot of kids passing our street, but knowing we’d have at least a handful with the house decorated, we couldn’t leave without having treats available.  When we returned, we were happy to see that some treats were still sitting in the box, but clearly some children had been by. 

We spent the next hour or so going through our girls’ treats, and then enjoying the evening with them.  In that time, we had just two children come to our door.  It was close to 9pm, and way past our daughters’ bedtime, so we decided to get the girls to bed.  We put the sign back outside along with the treats so that the doorbell wouldn’t disturb bedtime (one ring would have had them running down the stairs jazzed and hyped again)!  This time, we put out ALL of the treats our girls collected on their outing, which was about 50+ chocolate bars as well as other non-vegan candy (most people give out chocolate, apart from those that give out cans of soda… and, what’s with that??!… they might as well toss a dumbbell into the kids’ treat bags)!

While putting the girls in bed, we could hear some footsteps at our door.   We enjoyed knowing that more children could enjoy the sights of the decorating and help themselves to some goodies.  We weren’t expecting them to help themselves to all of the goodies, however.   Yes, these last two or three trick or treaters took every last treat that we had outside. 

What rotten little behaviour.  What about ”doing the right thing”, kids?  Really, you need to have that many treats?  Believe me, we didn’t mind  getting rid of all that chocolate.  And, when we were able to answer the door, we handed out handfuls of treats at a time.  But, that was us giving it out – not having it taken.  It was disappointing that these children had a “grab it all and run” mentality.  Afterwards, we had another child come to our door.  We had just chips left inside and my husband said “sorry, we don’t have much left“, as he handed out a couple of bags of chips.  The little guy said “that’s okay, I’ve already been to a lot of houses“.   That restored our faith in decent behaviour.  This boy could teach the rotten bunch a few things, no doubt.

Halloween was still a blast, and this gave us an opportunity to talk to our own girls about being fair.  Plus, I got a chance to look especially fetching in my traditional Halloween costume…