By: Sophia Romero
The air is crisp, the leaves have lost their green luster and have turned to bright orange and yellow. Halloween movies have been playing all week, and the smell of fall is in the air. It is time for Halloween festivities to commence.
Halloween is the one time a year where you can choose to dress up as whatever you would like. The costumes range from porcelain dolls, cats, celebrities, characters from television or movies, or spooky costumes.
On Halloween day, kids can dress up at their schools and are eager for the festivities that await later in the evening. However, the art of trick-or-treating in neighborhoods seems to have lost its appeal. Gone are the days of kids going door to door with their parents in the evening. Now, cities and towns are adopting different practices.
Churches, recreation centers, universities and Main Street programs are making safer events for children and families to enjoy during the day and evening as opposed to the traditional trick-or-treating practices. Here in Portales, Main Street offers “Safe Trick or Treat” which businesses on the square down-town open their doors to children to hand out candy in the day time where it is supervised by the Portales Police Department.
With these festivities in the day, parents and children are too tired to go out and trick-or-treating door-to-door at night, and the practice may be deemed unsafe to most folks. However, these practices are a great way for businesses to get involved and build a sense of community, the magic and wonder of Halloween is lost without trick-or- treating.
My roommate and I bought two bags of candy and eagerly awaited trick-or-treaters to stop by in their costumes. However, to our dismay, not a single trick-or-treater showed at our doorstep, so we moved on to homework and Netflix for the rest of the night. I pondered the thought that not a single trick-or-treater showed, and those thoughts moved me into a bit of catharsis into my own childhood. I remember being filled with wonder and excitement knowing I got to show off my costume and trick-or-treat after school, then dump my candy out on the floor in my bedroom and compare it to my friends’. Although the lost tradition of trick-or-treating seems to be obsolete, I hope it finds its way back to be a norm again, so the magic is never forgotten.
