It’s Not About the Candy

(Source: Unsplash/Conner Baker.)

Fall is here, and with it comes something I look forward to all year: Halloween. It’s the undisputed busiest day of the year in our neighborhood. For a few precious hours, the streets are teeming with people. Neighbors you never hear a peep out of open their doors with huge smiles and kind words. The sound of happy, excited children fills the air. If it weren’t for the accompanying sugar overload, I would almost wish Halloween could happen more than once a year. It’s the best, and I can’t wait for October 31 to roll around.

Since our youngest child was a toddler going out for his very first Halloween about 10 years ago, we’ve had the same routine in our household. I take the kids out to do the rounds, and my husband, Michel, stays home to give out candy. I recall him being pretty indifferent to everything Halloween in the past, but I’ve always looked forward to the evening and tried not to let his lack of enthusiasm dampen my enjoyment.

My husband grew up mostly on a farm. His parents had been farm kids, too, so Halloween wasn’t much of “a thing” for them. They would sometimes have Halloween parties, but there was no trick-or-treating. As an adult, he came to Halloween being willing to give out candy, but not much more.

I, on the other hand, grew up very much looking forward to Halloween and trick-or-treating every year. I still remember the house that gave out full-sized chocolate bars, and the place that set out a bowl for self-serve candy (surprise, surprise: the bowl was always empty). I knew that a lit jack-o-lantern or porch light meant “open for business” and not to bother at houses with neither. I remember the year I realized, mid-evening, that I really was too old to be trick-or-treating; I’d phoned it in with my costume, and I knew it. 

Perhaps driven by that sense of there being a limited number of years to enjoy trick-or-treating, I’ve felt determined to help my kids have great Halloweens. But the truth is that I love it as much as they do, and even my husband, who had been rather indifferent to it, has since changed his tune about Halloween—and I think it’s all a result of having become aware of what Halloween night can represent in a neighborhood. It doesn’t just have to be about candy. It can be about community.

Halloween as a Barometer for Walkability

My neighborhood, a grid-based streetcar suburb, certainly scores high on walkability, with excellent Halloween door density. But I think there’s even more potential for Halloween to be something that makes people feel part of a community—part of something bigger than themselves. The beauty of Halloween night as a community event is that it’s completely distributed; there’s no coordination or group collaboration required. You can participate or not, but the more people in close proximity who do, the more vibrant the street feels, and the more you crave that feeling all year round.

• Going for a walk is a simple yet powerful way to get to know your neighborhood and better understand its assets and challenges. Learn here how to host a neighborhood walk.

I absolutely love going out with my kids on Halloween night: The quick exclamations of “hi! bye!” as you pass families you know, going in different directions. The surprise and delight of seeing a great costume and realizing you know the kid inside it. Younger kids wearing costumes their older siblings had worn in previous years, and older ones out without a parent for the first time. The friends and neighbors who prepare extra special treats for the kids they know. The magic of a mild October night, the grin-and-bear-it commiseration of a windy or snowy one. 

We’ve got a neighbor a few doors down, who, for the better part of two decades, has created a massive, one-night-only Halloween extravaganza in his front yard. It’s so big that he takes the day off work to set it all up. He’s got decorations in the boulevard tree, in his second-floor windows, and on every inch of the front yard. Animatronic, inflatable, motion-activated, you name it, he’s got it. And he sits on his front steps to give out candy, reveling in the throngs of trick-or-treaters who are drawn to his home, having spotted the lights and crowd from a block away. A couple of doors down from him, there’s a church. They, too, get in on the fun, typically having a bonfire and giving out hot chocolate and candy from the churchyard. 

Those two sites create a bit of a buzz together. When you look down the street, you think “something’s happening up there, I want to check it out.” It was only a matter of time before we would want to try to build on it. But it would take a pandemic for that to happen. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic and New Perspectives

Although unbeknownst to me, my Halloween humbug husband’s perception of Halloween had been shifting over the years (thanks in great part to learning about Strong Towns). It wasn’t until 2020, however, that I really saw that something was different about him. 

With all the uncertainty that first pandemic year, the kids and I had decided we’d focus on some fun Halloween decorations for our yard. That way, we’d get a nice festive feeling, even if we couldn’t go trick-or-treating.

While the world was changing quickly that year, my husband had been slowly having a change of heart, too. No one was more surprised than me when he casually mentioned he’d ordered a fog machine with an Amazon gift card he’d won. While the kids and I were busy crafting a giant spider web and floating candles out of dollar store supplies, he’d gone straight to pro-level equipment!

That was the year people were creating elaborate “candy chutes” to ensure social distancing, and he was right in there with them. Since, rather than hanging out inside the house, he would be outside to give out candy, he also donned a costume for the first time I could remember.

We debated right up until that day whether it was safe to go trick-or-treating. In the end, we decided since it was primarily outside, we would do a small amount—just visit whoever was open on our own block. And, as expected, there were fewer homes with lights or lanterns than usual. But what was interesting was that many people who were giving out candy had set up outside, sitting on their porch or steps, or even with a small table outside. The memory of this—folks with their masks and tongs, hidden smiles, and muffled greetings—is quite moving. People clearly felt that Halloween was worth preserving. It also occurred to me that the outdoor pivot was a major win for trick-or-treating accessibility.

In our part of the world, people giving out candy typically stay inside their homes except to answer the door. Folks who set up outside, like our Halloween-loving neighbor, are the exception. So to be in the front yard, with others doing the same, was a game-changer for how my husband viewed Halloween. He was now in good company with the neighbors, and they’d chat between waves of trick-or-treaters. Rather than being adjacent to the roving excitement, the candy distributors were now a part of it.

The next year, a huge piece of foam board, the kind used for insulation, blew into our yard in September. The next thing I knew, Michel was carving it into faux headstones with funny engravings and scouring the cupboards for glycerin (“I need to make more fog juice!”). 

It was official. The Halloween holdout was a convert.

When asked about his mindset transformation, Michel says that as he was becoming more involved in the neighborhood, and seeing it through a Strong Towns lens, he began to realize that Halloween wasn’t really about the candy, as he’d previously believed. 

Now he could see that opening one’s doors to any and all strangers who showed up was really the ultimate act of neighborliness and hospitality. What’s the first thing you do when someone comes to your home? You welcome them warmly and offer them something to eat or drink. Around the world, hospitality looks like some variation of that. So, Halloween is like a neighborhood-wide expression of low-stakes, high-yield hospitality.

(As a bonus, that idea also freed him from the common Halloween grumbling of trick-or-treaters who were “too old” or not wearing a costume.)

Whether you greet two, 20, or 200 little witches and ghouls at your doorstep (or better yet, from your front yard) this Halloween, I encourage you to remember one thing: It may feel like it’s just about the candy, and that may really be all that the kids remember, but you’re taking part in something much bigger. You’re doing something that builds a tangible sense of community, one chocolate bar at a time.

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