Parents, your kids don’t need another trunk-or-treat this October

I wanted Halloween to still feel like Halloween when Halloween actually arrived.

Think about what made Oct. 31 so incredible when we were kids. There was one day a year when somebody handed you a bucket or pillowcase, sent you out into the neighborhood and essentially told you to collect as much candy as your legs could carry home.

That was the deal.

And it was glorious.

Now, by the time Halloween arrives, some kids have been trick-or-treating since Columbus Day.

There are trunk-or-treats at schools. Trunk-or-treats at churches. Trunk-or-treats hosted by community groups. Downtown trick-or-treat days. Halloween festivals. Candy walks. Sports team parties. Businesses handing out candy.

Then, finally, actual Halloween.

By then, another bucket full of candy is just another bucket full of candy.

And I don’t really blame any one organization for this.

In fact, I think we’ve created a strange kind of Halloween arms race.

You’re a parent involved with the PTA and you see the neighboring elementary school hosting a trunk-or-treat. The pictures are all over Facebook. Hundreds of kids showed up. Everyone loved it.

So what are you supposed to say at your next meeting?

“Let’s not do something fun for the kids”?

Good luck with that.

The same thing happens with chambers of commerce and downtown business groups. One downtown organizes an October trick-or-treat event and draws scores of families. Businesses participate. Parents post pictures. It looks like a huge success.

Pretty soon, the chamber in the next town feels like it should have one, too.

Then the library does something. Then another community organization. Then somebody adds a second event because the first one filled up.

Nobody sat down and decided that children weren’t getting enough candy in October. It just proliferated.

And every individual event makes perfect sense on its own.

It’s when you put them all together that I wonder whether we’re taking some of the luster off one of childhood’s great traditions.

There is something to be said for anticipation.

Part of the magic of being a kid was waiting for things.

You waited for your birthday. You waited for Christmas morning. You waited for the last day of school.

And you waited for Halloween.

For weeks, you’d think about what you were going to be. You’d see the decorations start going up around the neighborhood and in school. If you were the artistic type, which I was, you’d draw pictures of ghosts and haunted houses and jack-o’-lanterns in your notebooks and at home.

You’d watch the weather forecast and hope it wouldn’t rain.

Then Oct. 31 finally came and you got to do something you couldn’t do on any other night of the year.

You got dressed up, went outside after dark with your friends and knocked on doors until your feet hurt.

The scarcity was part of what made it special.

I understand why trunk-or-treats exist, and there are places off Long Island where they make a ton of sense. They’re contained. They’re convenient. And in communities where traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating isn’t practical, they can provide kids with an experience they otherwise might not have.

I’m not calling for the abolition of the trunk-or-treat.

I’m just asking us to show a little restraint.

Because sometimes I think we adults are so determined to manufacture great childhood experiences that we don’t realize we’re diluting the ones that already exist.

So this October, when another flyer comes home advertising another trunk-or-treat and your kids inevitably ask whether they can go, maybe consider doing what I finally did last year.

Say no.

Not because you want them to miss out.

Because you want them to still have something special to look forward to.

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Juliana Loredo, 6, of Woonsocket, R.I., reacts as a mechanical spider leaps out at her while collecting Halloween candy during the Mass Cruisers’ Trunk or Treat night Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025 in Foxboro. Credit: Paul Connors / The Sun ChronicleTransmission Reference, via Associated Press