I took my kids trick-or-treating on a few occasions, but the more I thought about the messages we were communicating to our kids, the more I began to think trick-or-treating might not be such a great idea.
Ironically, while growing up, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. What kid doesn't like candy? Having a free-for-all candy night with no adult supervision was the equivalent of kid Heaven.
But that was then when Halloween was a lot more innocent. Between the food waste and the front lawn horror shows, I now stand on the side of those who think we should skip trick-or- treating.
Here are 4 good reasons for you to ponder:
#1 Health & Mixed Messages
Letting our children trick-or-treat contradicts our position that sugar is bad for their teeth and bad for them. We limit the sugar our children eat all year, but one day a year we give them a free rein to eat as much sugar as they want.
Here’s a shocking fact to put things in perspective: the average child consumes three cups of sugar on Halloween!
Eating Halloween candy is not limited to one night, either. For however long it takes them to get through their bag of candy, that's how many days they are filling their bodies with harmful amounts of sugar.
Allowing our children to trick or treat on Halloween and eat so much candy is not practicing what we preach, nor is it responsible parenting. I'm guilty too, but when the facts are on the table— wow.
One Dentist’s Strategy
I read that one dentist pays children $2.00 for every pound of Halloween candy they give him. While I can appreciate his intention, we have to consider the message gestures like these send our children.
We buy the candy, the kids knock on our doors, we give them the candy, and then the kids sell it to the dentist.
How can turning our kids into candy peddlers be a solution?
#2 Manners & Strangers
We teach our kids not to talk to strangers, and we teach them that it isn't polite to ask people for things, yet, one night a year we let our kids knock on the doors of strangers and ask them for candy.
As a mother reflecting on the idea of trick or treating, it strikes me as being a contradiction of everything we’ve taught our children thus far.
My Shameful Story
I had just turned twelve, and my best friend Bridget and I were famished after a long day of sitting in classrooms. At about 3:20 in the afternoon, as we were walking home with pangs of hunger, we had this bright idea.
It was Halloween which meant that we could quell our hunger pangs by trick-or-treating!
We knocked on the door of an apartment near our school, and an elderly woman opened the door. Very surprised to see us, she asked, "Isn't it a little early, girls?"
She gave us some candy anyway.
We teach our children that it's not polite to ask for things, yet, once a year we permit it. We teach our kids not to speak to strangers, yet, once a year we permit it. We teach our kids NEVER to take candy from a stranger, yet, once a year we permit it.
Of course, there are always exceptions to rules, but these are a lot of exceptions and all in one night.
#3 Corporate Horror Show
Halloween has become a creepy holiday. The decorations have become gothic and violent since the corporate world has recognized the money to be made on Halloween.
When we were little, we had innocent little costumes: princess and cowboy outfits. Sometimes we threw a sheet over our heads and went out as ghosts. There was nothing more than a pumpkin with a candle burning inside on the doorstep of each home.
Forty years later, my neighbor would put gravestones on his front lawn and skeletons that moved to look like they were coming out of graves. When we drove up the hill at night, the scene looked so real that my kids used to get scared.
So did I!
And that was a mild scene. My friend's neighbor would spend a fortune decorating his lawn until it looked like the scene out of a horror film. I used to wonder what on earth that man was thinking.
Halloween is supposed to be for kids, not psychopaths.
#4 Waste & Starvation
I like the idea of carving pumpkins, but should we be wasting food like that? With so much starvation and deprivation in the world, it seems insensitive to waste pumpkins for a night of amusement.
For Halloween, about 22.2 million pumpkins go to waste! At your average price of $5.00 per pumpkin, that's 111,000,000 dollars of food that we waste.
The average cost to feed one person per day in the US is supposed to be about $11.00 (seems very low); divided by 111, 000,000, we could feed 10 million people, roughly. (2022 stats)
My god, that's a shameful waste of pumpkins.
What Can Kids Do Instead of Trick-or-Treating?
Have a costume party
Start a local fund and ask people to donate $5.00—instead of buying a pumpkin—and then use the money to donate food to a local charity.
Study the history of Halloween, the practice of Halloween, and the contradictions of Halloween, and ask your children to take a position for or against it. Then let them have a debate with the opposing party or write an age-appropriate essay arguing their side of the argument.
What You Should Not Do
Don’t take a stance of moral superiority if you decide to skip Halloween.
I had a friend whose children would stay home on Halloween. When the neighborhood kids knocked on their door, they would offer candy and then explain why they didn’t celebrate Halloween.
The unspoken was that the family was morally superior to those who knocked on their door. I’m pretty sure that no one accepted candy from said family without feeling “less than.”
Instead, use it as an opportunity to teach your children that everyone is entitled to their beliefs and to their opinions, just as you and your children are entitled to their own.
While we may not always agree with other people, we need to respect other people’s ways because each person is born with an inherent dignity that is worthy of respect.
What do you think? Let me know in the comment section.
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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.
As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 23 years of experience working in education.
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