Taking away Halloween...

[lilwriter85]

In my hometown, they do trunk or treats in one of the strip mall parking lots. My dad worked for the nearby mining company and one year, he was given the task of decorating a company vehicle and handing out candy. My mom went with him to help and she said that the kids and parents had fun.

[Lady Elaine]

In our town there is a trunk or treat the Saturday before the holiday that is put on by a church. (I don't go to that one.) There are several on Halloween too. They have a trunk or treat at the school on Halloween during the day and parties, too. Then we visit relatives that give out big bags of treats. By the time it's dark we already have a bag full of candy, so there's no real reason to trick or treat. But we do anyway.

[contrary]

the ringing of doorbells is a huge allure for my girls. in fact, if they get to a house where the door is currently open for other TOTers, they will hang back until the door closes, and they can ring the bell.

I honestly don't understand it all, despite reading several diatribes on the whys and wherefores of banning halloween. It still makes no sense in my head. It's nothing at all to do with Jesus OR Satan...it's a secular, cultural, costumed holiday. With costumes! and free candy! and costumes!

I grew up in a great TOT neighborhood, and my mom worked with me on fabulous costumes.

I love doing the trek with my girls, and seeing the other kids out and about. In fact, the biggest trouble I had last year, was the first house we went to gave each girl a can of orange soda. WTF? Those things are cold and HEAVY! And guess who got stuck carrying them in her jeans pockets? THIS GIRL!

[TXDuck]

We live in a middle class neighborhood crawling with kids. Every year we have 100+ trick-or-treaters. And it seems like the whole neighborbood throws itself into it. There's a Fall Festival the weekend before, prizes for best decorated houses and blocks. Some of the houses also have adult refreshments. It becomes one giant block party. It's so much fun. I hope it never changes and I feel bad for kids not in neighborhoods like ours.

[Peas n carrots]

I love Halloween! I'm going to be David Bowie this year. It's just fun to dress up with friends!

I was Ziggy Stardust a few years ago!

I agree with Raine...Halloween seems more restricted now. It is en vogue for fundies to pull out of celebrations, and in other areas the fear of stranger danger keeps trick or treating to very controlled environments.

[theologygeek]

Trunk or treat is where people come to a designated spot (here it's the church's parking lot) they set up in the back of their truck or the trunk of their car by decorating it festively and hand out candy. Kinda like tailgating for kids. It sucks.

My best friend puts together the trunk or treat festivities at her daughter's school. They have a blast. She even devised the allergy free trunk for children with nut allergies so they could enjoy Halloween too. There is music, dancing, games, contests, and prizes. It's a lot of work to put together but the kids get very excited about it and have a lot of fun. It's the day before Halloween so people can still do trick or treating on Halloween night if they want.

[jenny_islander]

I suppose if you carry a huge long list of things that are SATANNNNN, you can see SATANNNNN in every Halloween costume on the street. One year the best homemade costume belonged to a middle school girl who used a big Chinese rice planter's hat as the framework for a stuffed cloth Portuguese man o'war jellyfish. The tentacles trailed down to her toes.

OK, somebody try to prove the Satanic nature of the Portuguese man o'war jellyfish, fundie style. Bonus points for the wackiest KJV Bible misreading you can cook up.

[emmiedahl]

Our school does a trunk or treat, but not on Halloween itself. If would be lame if it replaced trick-or-treating, but not if it is in addition to it!

Our apartment building has literally hundreds of kids, just scads of them, so we get heavy traffic on Halloween. We usually take our kids out TOTing early and then are home to pass out candy to the late crew by 8-ish.

We have the most random, thrown-together costumes. My kids can never be anything normal. This year they were all going to be members of KISS, with the baby as Gene Simmons. I was totally looking forward to this and then, one by one, they all changed their minds. :(