Reading the responses in this thread, I’m kinda starting to think we need to bring the “trick” half of the tradition back so some of these neighbors get a clue.

And even people who live in safe areas will like their kids into a car and go drive

Yeah, I’m annoyed about that sort of thing, too – albeit more about the car-brained laziness of parents idling a car from house to house instead of parking and walking with their kids, rather than the class issues – but that’s a different rant.

I greatly value the experience of knocking on my neighbors’ doors and it’s sad to see people discount this community building experience.

Thanks, you said what I was thinking but struggling to express.

I think maybe I’ll bring it up with my community association, to see if next year we can’t make some sort of organized effort to encourage door-answering (and communicate that renewed expectation to trick-or-treaters).

That seems plausible, except that I’ve been living here since long before COVID and have been suffering a lack of trick-or-treaters the entire time.

Actually, that reminds me of another failed hypothesis: when I first moved in, the neighborhood was just starting to gentrify and was still a little rough, so at first I figured the lack of trick-or-treaters was due to the lack of families with children in the neighborhood in general. Plenty of 'em now, though.

Technically correct, because they weren’t “American” before they landed.

They abandoned the Bible as a real guide long before that, though.

We need to bring back the Bull Moose Party (at the local level, not the Russian-backed spoiler effect garbage like the Green Party is debasing itself at).

!theydidthemath@lemm.ee

(Somebody still needs to create !theydidthemonstermath)