For those of us growing up in the 1960s (or perhaps the 1950s), Halloween was a big event. Our streets were filled with kids going door to door, knocking and shouting “Trick or Treat!” in a quest for candy.
At our home in a middle-class suburban neighborhood, we had tons of kids come to the door.
My elementary school featured a Halloween Parade on the grass field – where all the students who wished could wear costumes and walk around a big circle area to show off. We would talk about our costume ideas at recess and lunch, days and weeks in advance.
Halloween was a big deal!
This year, we had 5 knocks on our door, with a cumulative total of 13 kids. Last year we had just 4 knocks on the door. Both years we had Halloween decorations set up out front, and of course, the front of the house lit with lights.
Relative Halloween participation depends on where you live. A friend in the SF Bay area says they had over 70 kids. Another in the Los Angeles area said they had none – everyone now goes to organized Halloween events, he said.
A relative in South Dakota had over 100 kids at their house! That made me wonder – what’s the fertility rate in SD? Well, it’s the highest in the nation, although coming down rapidly. But just a few years ago, SD’s fertility rate was consistently above the 2.1 replacement level. South Dakota has more kids now in the prime age 5-13 trick or treating category (most kids stop trick or treating after about age 12 or 13).
Compare this to the fertility rates of the 1950s and 1960s:
I added red and green lines to indicate the years where these kids would be about age 5 to 12 years old. As you can see, the peak years for kids trick or treating would have been about 1955 to 1980 or so.
Other factors included media reports in the 1970s of kids being given tainted candy with embedded razor blades or drugs. These urban legends were not true, and no child has died due to Halloween candy. These untrue reports were followed by hospitals offering to x-ray children’s candy for free, which gave legitimacy to these urban legends. The Tylenol tampering terror of 1982 (someone put cyanide in Tylenol bottles, which resulted in the deaths of seven people) reinforced the suspected risks, even though fewer than 100 kids were ever impacted by tainted candy in the entire 20th century (mostly in the peak years from 1958 to 1983). Pretty soon, many were afraid to go trick or treating.
Which leads us up to day – many areas today have organized Halloween activities. In my area, the downtown streets are closed off and kids go “trick or treating” from one business to another, and to tables set up by local community groups and organizations. In our town, this year’s downtown activities were packed with kids and families. Others have set up tail-gate-like parties where kids go car to car in a large parking lot. And of course, some just hold various parties and events. Some years, there’s been a Halloween event at the local fairgrounds too.
For many, these “safe” alternatives have replaced trick or treating.
But fundamentally, many communities in the U.S. simply have fewer kids than what many of us saw when we were young. This is one of those obvious and visible demographic changes where most of us wonder, what happened to the kids? But few think this through and realize we are seeing the effects of a domestic population decline.
Related: In addition to the demographic shift, and the faux tainted candy fears, the ’70s and ’80s where when several “Halloween” and classic horror films were made. As young people had fewer (or no kids), many young adults began to have their own Halloween parties and over the next years, Halloween morphed into an adult party event. In fact, an estimated 70% of adults today do something for Halloween and Halloween is the 2nd largest “party” event after New Year’s Eve (and the sports activities on New Year’s Day). Today, Halloween is more a family and adult party event – and in much of the country, the tradition of trick or treating has ended.
Indeed, we have decided that beginning next year, we will no longer set up decorations and have candy to hand out on Halloween. This is a decision we probably should have made a few years ago.
