To think that trick or treating should be confined to your own street or friends/family

I've been buying sweet & chocbars for weeks now, just resting my hands from carving the pumpkin then will begin decorating the window to attract the little monsters! All welcome, our area is known for a good haul! Raining at the moment so I may have to cast a weather spell! Have a good time everyone.

YANBU in that it's getting out of hand. But YABU ,- what about children who don't live near friends or family, or who live in a street where other people don't want trick or treaters?

Our street used to really go for it, for all the little kids. Then someone posted on the local facebook page that it was a great place to take kids, and for the next few years, people from all over the town started driving over and bringing their kids. Blocking driveways, meaning 3/4/5 times as much treats needed to be bought, and would still run out.

In the last year or two, hardly any houses in the street put out pumpkins any longer.

Our lane is rubbish for Halloween, the kids would have a choice of 2 or 3 houses if we were only allowed here. But there’s a road round the corner that goes all out and almost every house is decorated (in competition with each other) so we go there as well. At some houses they hand out mulled wine to the parents and there’s a residents pumpkin competition. Locals won’t drive up or down it tonight as they know there are dozens of kids everywhere.

I don't think so. As long as trick or treaters are only going to houses with obvious signs of an invitation to knock - lights on, pumpkin lit, decorations - then it's reasonable to knock on stranger's doors too.

I don't know anyone with young children these days, but I'm happy to have a few dozen unknowns come to the door once a year. We live in a village so I recognise some of the parents, but I'm not bothered if I don't. I'm not checking ID before dishing out the Haribo.

It's barely worth the effort of getting dressed up if you're only going to close neighbours and friends. And really half the thrill of Halloween for little ones is not knowing who's going to be on the other side of the door. I wear a witches hat and carry my black cat to the door 😄

Oh Come on now - I was just causing you to laugh a minute ago - don’t spoil it now. You clearly need all the amusement you can get.

The thing is, when you were a child you only have a memory or perception of what your family did or what was done locally. Trick or treating was a thing where I grew up, first in a block of flats we would go around to neighbours and then on our street. It died out as all the kids on the road got older. We couldn't go around to family we didn't live near them.

We're very lucky where we live. It's a new build estate lots of young families, rule is don't knock if no decorations out. DD loves it

In our village of people decorated you can knock, if they haven’t leave them alone.

Just don’t participate. You don’t have to. Big sign on the door saying you’ve run out of sweets. Turn off the lights and people will leave you alone.

Personally I leave a bowl of sweets out encouraging local children to take one and leave enough for everyone else. Then we go to an area 15 mins away where all my kids school friends are and they go out together. They have whale of a time and if you don’t like that then I can’t help you.

I’m not a tightwad. Far from it but I don’t want feral kids at my door. We put up with enough all year round

When I was a child in the 80's going into the 90's we did trick or treat, neighbours only (and called every house - decorated houses and a pumpkin on the doorstep wasn't a thing then).

Wearing our bin bags and plastic masks or witches hat, most time was spent at home or friends houses doing duck apple, getting an apple in sink /or on string etc.

It's not very busy where we live now but I've noticed in the last few years since C19 anyway, when it was the thing to leave sweets on the doorstep, teens not even dressed up would take sweets. So I'm not leaving sweets on the doorstep anymore.

I've never taken my DC anywhere but our/neighbouring roads.

DC not interested this year so for the first time we're not doing anything, we're going out anyway (not Halloween related).

WHY should people participate? They're not doing anything wrong and spoiling anything for anyone, they just.. don't join in?

My door bell is going to ring non stop between 5 and 10pm tonight. I can't leave sweets outside because the grabby non-locals would steal the lot and there's nothing left for the local kids. I don't mind, we have lots of friends over, we take turn, it's fun.

I really wouldn't expect everyone to find it that entertaining and be forced to do it too.

Exactly. It's not. It's just a bit of fun.

Oh another Halloween, another opportunity for posters to parade their misery like it's a virtue. 🙄🥱

Happy to have brought some amusement to your life.

And I will not be giving out sweets to strangers’ kids. Grateful for the pumpkin tradition which means they will not be calling at my house.

what is the Halloween equivalent of Bah humbug?

Baaaaargh humspider!!

It's not American nonsense - in Scotland anyway it's a very old tradition called guising.
I do get where you are coming from in a way. I live in flats where no one really goes in for it, but up the road there's an area famous for Halloween where loads of people go. But I think I'm going to go to a street where a family member lives that will be much quieter, the family member knows the neighbours - the neighbours sort of know us, and we will only go to decorated houses. Complete strangers is a bit nerve wracking...

We dont do trick or treating. No issues with it, just something we dont bother with due to three birthdays this week.

But

We live on an estate where 90% of the residents are elderly. If we were doing t&t, sticking to those rules would mean they couldn't do it.

The once we did do it we went to a neighbourhood estate where 3/4 of the houses were decorated and the area was like you see in films, kids everywhere.

Exactly. It's not American at all. 😆 Trick or Treating started in medieval Europe!

Trunk or treat for our rural communities. We. Drive to a local car park and give out sweets from our car boots.
Some years we go to the nearest village and go guising there. I don’t think there is an issue with people going to different areas though.

IKR? A bizarre take.

I’m trying to figure out how it’s entitled to be handing out sweets and decorating my house in the name of giving kids a fun evening.

angry? the poster who called everyone miserable tightwads?
We agree, it sounds a bit excessive 😂

I am laughing at them.

Since when was it American? My mum went trick or treating and she’s almost 60.

In our village the village WhatsApp asks who is happy to have trick or treaters calls and who is not for whatever reasons. The pumpkin signal is also generally used. We do have sweets in but, as we are at the very end of the village and off the beaten track, we don't get any callers now that the chidren if our immediate neighbours have grown up.