It’s 8 p.m., and you’re finally ready to leave. The fall air is in full swing. You and your friends are meeting up to go trick-or-treating. You all start to walk through the neighborhood. But you stop and look around. Where is everyone?
Although Halloween as a holiday remains strong, its main practice of trick-or-treating is no longer the primary event. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, trick-or-treating has become less popular. Now, only a few neighborhoods have the number of people they did before the pandemic.
This tradition is dying right before people’s eyes. A beloved holiday that now-adults celebrated as kids, their own kids can no longer experience. With this decline, it feels like trick-or-treating won’t continue to be around at all unless people make more of an effort to celebrate it. Adults post videos of full baskets, waiting to hand out candy but can’t, and kids are being robbed of great memories. We as young people should bring it back and push to ask parents to go out.
Many people have noticed that fewer and fewer people are trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods. Even kids are talking about how few houses are giving out candy. Due to inflation of prices and candy prices being so high, not as many adults are looking to hand out candy.
Not only that, but people are creating alternatives that aren’t the traditional trick-or-treating, such as trunk-or-treating or just having their parents buy it for them. It robs kids of learning and connecting with the neighborhood they live in. Some kids go to other neighborhoods for trick-or-treating, but their parents aren’t looking to drive an hour to a neighborhood that still celebrates avidly.
Some kids love trick-or-treating because they aren’t scared to be social because of the mask. It helps build confidence in young children and makes them more extroverted.
But it’s not entirely the adults' fault. Some of the kids don’t want to participate in trick-or-treating anymore. A lot of kids are now being sucked into their phones and tablets, and don’t want social interaction.
Both adults or kids, people are sad that the tradition is dying. People recall their experiences as they watch it become less and less popular and celebrated. Halloween won’t die. But trick-or-treating might forever remain a memory, unless we do something about it.