If I’m honest, I thought trick-or-treating would have lost its luster by now. I assumed we’d be spending the teen years at home on Halloween, grabbing a bowl of mini Milky Way bars each time the doorbell rang.
Now I know better. I don’t bother waiting for the candy to be spilled on the bedspread before asking my teenager, “What are you going to be next year?”
It’s become a sort of tradition in our family. Before the masks have been stowed and the face paint wiped way, the planning for next Halloween begins. Will she be a character easily recognized or one she made up herself? Will she partner with friends for a costume that works only when matched up with another or go it alone?
Planning kicks into high gear in August, and by the end of October, the plans are firm, down to which houses we’ll hit and who among the other teens my daughter knows will be coming along for the ride.
My daughter and her friends are lucky to be big kids in a small town. We live in a community that has learned to embrace all children on Halloween, from the tiniest tots to the tallest teenagers. My daughter’s favorite house is the one that offers up a choice of traditional Halloween candy for the little ones and bags of ramen noodles for the big ones. They understand the teenagers, and they welcome them to their front porch.
It’s a respite in a world that isn’t exactly kind to gangly superheroes and pimple-faced witches on Halloween.
Dozens of American towns have enacted laws to keep older kids home on Oct. 31, enacting curfews for anyone with an age ending in “teen,” even threatening jail time to kids who proffer a plastic pumpkin in exchange for a few chocolate bars. I’ve seen moms write angry Facebook posts about big kids “ruining” the holiday for their little ones. In one “Today Show” poll — albeit a non-scientific one — 73% of respondents called for kids to stop trick-or-treating some time between 12 and 17. Over at FiveThirtyEight, the response was even younger: Kids should be done with the face paint and scares between 12 and 15, according to their respondents.
Some kids haven’t even hit puberty at 12, but they’re expected to lay down their childhood innocence and watch the other kids have all the fun on what may well be the biggest night of the year for kids in their communities. They’re told that they’re too old, too grown up for sweets and fanciful dress-up, even as we, their parents, are trying so desperately to let them hold onto the vestiges of childhood.
Stop! Wait! Don’t make them grow up too fast. And don’t blame the teenagers. When experts crunch the numbers about what actually goes down around Halloween, teenagers aren’t the problem.
Take this stat from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association: Halloween tops New Year’s Eve when it comes to drunk driving crashes, and people 21 and up are responsible for the bulk of tragic deaths in these crashes. Sadly, the holiday also tops others in terms of pedestrians hit by cars, so the real danger on Halloween may be simply walking around.
What about teens making a mess of the neighborhood? Sure, it happens, but according to data from Travelers Insurance, homeowners are much more likely to suffer a theft on Halloween night than the typical egging and TPing blamed on most teenagers. Thefts from the house make up a whopping 60% of property crimes on the spooky night, followed by thefts off-premises (such as from cars) at 21%. Vandalism and what the insurers label “malicious mischief” accounts for about 19%.
I can’t help but wonder if we could drive that stat down even further if we just let kids be kids on Halloween … and trick or treat.
Halloween is my teenager’s favorite holiday. She recently told me it’s a day when “everyone can be whoever they want.” It’s a day when she can explore alternate versions of herself with makeup and masks and get-ups pieced together from thrift store adventures. It’s a day when she can eat a Snickers or three for dinner, and I won’t say a thing about getting her daily dose of green veggies. It’s a day when she can be just another kid.
Watching my teenager squeal over a spooky display in the store or dance around our living room to the songs of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a chance to see the little girl who still lives somewhere deep inside this too tall, too wise, too-eager-to-grow-up body.
When you peer out your front window on Halloween night and see someone old enough to play on the varsity team ringing your doorbell, you may see someone who seems “a little old for this trick-or-treating thing.” Take another look. You might just see someone who’s decided they’re still a kid after all, at least for one night.
