2021, Family, Food, holidays, home, Seasons, Technology, Uncategorized

Cyber-ween

69 Comments

I love Halloween.  Admittedly I love lots of holidays and special occasions.  (I sent cards to a few people on National Eat a Peach Day this year.) 

We used to decorate a lot more but the current terrorist tabby and devil dog make indoor décor a little difficult.  For many years YA and had ghosts playing ring-a-round the rosy out front and some years we’ve had spider webs adorning the front evergreen.  I always do a cornstalk and usually a few days before Halloween, I get pumpkins (if I get them sooner, the squirrels just eat them). 

Then on the night of Halloween I put out my luminaries.  I made these when YA was little (and I couldn’t afford to buy décor).  Mandarin orange tin cans painted orange and then stamped with pumpkins and black cats and eerie clouds – then I punched holes in them with a hammer and nail.  (I filled them with water and frozen them first – made it much easier to punch the holes.)

I love seeing trick-or-treaters and when YA was little, we used to have quite a number.  As the years went by, it’s gotten less and less.  From what I’ve read, this is common everywhere, not just my street.  Of course, pandemic threw a monkey wrench into trick-or-treating.  Last year I put candies into little bags with orange ribbon 3 weeks before Halloween, wore a mask and held the bowl out as far as I could.  I only have to do this three times; only four trick-or-treaters last year.  It was very sad.

When I saw the “Candy Map” app on a Nextdoor thread, I asked YA about it.  You put your address in indicating you’ll be open for business on Halloween night so all the little zombies and princesses can find you.  I don’t know if it will bring more costumes to the door but we decided to give it a try.  I went ahead and filled little bags again this year – I did twelve.  I’d love it if I have to quickly fill more bags but even if I give out twelve, it will be three times more than last year.

Do you pass out treats on Halloween?  What kind?

69 thoughts on “Cyber-ween”

  1. we do pass out candy on halloween
    usually from one of those giant bags of candy fron costco or somewhere with reese’s and almond joys in there
    timing of that purchase is considered because in a house where there is no candy normally 200 pieces will disappear in a week if left out and will be reloaded before the holiday even hitt
    my wife is cheap and buys the one with the jawbreakers and the rolls of little pastel discs. i like all the candy and the 10 kids we get and i dress to varying degrees in different years
    this year ari is running halloween he is peppa pig and there is a whole pig family to assign
    mama and daddy pig, papa pig, george and a very well defined crew to go along with his theme
    ari has a great mind and watching it tick is a joy of my life
    they just got back from kosovo to visit envers family and realize the differences in the worlds
    there they have chickens and cows and lots of cousins nearby but things like halloween and u s holidays take a different aire. they kind of get it buts it’s some weird american thing
    in reality a bog part of who we all are is some weird american thing so it’s good to get a perspective
    i’m off to chicago today to visit daughters and help with car issues the girls are having
    they are beginning their own holiday traditions and it will be interesting to see how that plays out
    halloween thanksgiving and christmas all around the corner
    olivia got some theater gigs starting in november in live theater and will be a paid thespian. very exciting. emma has tutoring students and a long long break (thanksgiving til new years break is a depaul tradition everyone likes) so they are figuring out how to factor minneapolis into the equation
    pumpkins candy costumes
    a cool formula for an event
    i think i’ll do the long flowiwinf robe and play my pandemic beard to the hilt
    a pointed hat and wand are all the accessories i’ll consider
    life can be simple
    eat a reese’s

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    2. Right about not buying till the last minute. Isaac has a bag of chewy things in the cupboard and I’m trying not to think about them. Well I did take just one.
      And everyone has some bit of weird American in them now. Even Harley-hating me, with my R’n’R style.

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      1. When we bought the candy last weekend we bought the candy we wanted to give out and then we each bought a bag of candy that we wanted. I would never give out almond joys as they are much too valuable to be handed out willy-nilly to possible non-coconut eaters.

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  2. Some years I’ve tried to get into the spirit of Halloween. I’ve had carved and lit pumpkins on the front steps, and a few decorations on the front porch. I’ve even gone so far as to dress up as a witch while handing out candy. Those years I succeeded, but, mostly I’ve failed. It would probably be easier if I had kids myself. Also, husband is just not cooperative, and tries to ignore the whole thing, and for the past six years, we’ve had Bernie. He’s a barking fool whenever anyone approaches the house, so now, I turn off the lights and try to ignore it, too. Two hours of incessant barking right around dinner time, is just not my idea of a good time. I think I’m done with Halloween.

    We do have a few neighbors, three to be exact, who are into Halloween big time. Their houses, porches, or yards are decorated big time, so there will likely be at least some trick-or-treaters at their houses.

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  3. I’m an old curmudgeon when it comes to Halloween. I guess I got tired of feeding America’s sugar habit and obesity crisis as well as getting annoyed by the mercenary teens whose only goal seems to be to collect as much candy as fast as possible (often without bothering to don a costume) and then not even having the decency to mumble an awkward “Thanks” as they tear off to the neighbor’s house.

    If Trick-or-Treating was limited to, say, the 3-8-year-old age group, I might consider resuming the tradition. That age group gets it, has fun, shows excitement, and is usually accompanied by polite parents who prompt them to say “Thank you.”

    But it’s a moot point in my neighborhood because all the kids are grown and gone, and we wouldn’t get much traffic anyway.

    Chris in Owatonna (a Snickers man all the way, but I’d save them for me and pass out candy corn or some treat that I don’t like. 🙂 )

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    1. Lesson number one if your “doing” Halloween: Never buy candy you wouldn’t personally eat. Never. Candy corn? What the heck were you thinking, Chris?

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      1. LOL. Perhaps I exaggerated with candy corn. I don’t think I’ve ever passed it out to the kiddies. Didn’t like it much as a kid. But we did buy snickers and another “decent candy bar” such as Kit-Kats or Sweettarts. Those got passed out first so whatever was left was Snickers.

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    2. One of my more meorable Halloween trick-or-treaters, a few years ago, was a black teen who wasn’t wearing a costume. When I asked him what he was dressed as, he pondered the question for a moment and responded: “A free man.” I loved it, and gave him an extra candy.

      Having worked at an alternative high school for fourteen years, I’ve learned what I had mostly forgotten from my own teen-age years, that teens are really flailing about trying to figure out who they are. For some that’s not smooth sailing, and if availing themselves of a once a year opportunity to get some free candy helps, I choose not to get my underwear in a bunch over it.

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    3. I was a curmudgeon too, looking on it as robbery with violence, and would sulk in the background while Jane handed stuff out to innocent people that I saw as thugs.
      But I’m in Palomar now!
      But Mars Bars are the real truth. Snickers? What is that? They taste funny. And they’ve got things in them.

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    4. I’ve had much better luck with teenagers than you have Chris. I’ve always figured if they’re willing to dress up a little bit and come around a little bit later I don’t mind feeding their pillowcases. But they’ve always been dressed up and always been polite so it’s been easy to include them.

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    1. Does that make it a health food?

      I just returned from the next-to-the-last local farmer’s market. I’m now stocked up on a variety of winter squashes. Got some beautiful leeks, a generous bunch of kale, some gorgeous beets of various colors, and dill. I see some soup on the menu in the near future.

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      1. I think that Snickers must be a health food. Just take a Vitamin C tablet with it and you are good.

        I can always rationalize the intake of sugar bombs.

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        2. For several years, Code Red Mt Dew and Snickers are what got me through tech week…
          I gave up the Mt. Dew when they started making the bottles smaller. And the last time I had a Mt. Dew I felt rotten the rest of the day.

          But Faygo Grape pop! That’s where it’s at! 🙂
          My ‘Go To’. Available at Kwik Trips everywhere.
          And I eat apple slices when programming lights.
          But I keep Peanut M&M’s on the tech table to share. (Except this year it was individually wrapped Hersey’s candies to share.)

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  6. Halloween used to be easy. The kids I cared about were the wee ones who came around early in the night with their dads leading them. Then I’d brace myself for two hours of kids old enough they shoulda known better, but they were hooked on sugar. Halloween falls in the same month as pheasant season in Iowa, so I’d buy a bag of Snickers bars for the kiddies and then maybe two bags for me. When you walk all day for pheasants you can make yourself very popular by carrying a big of Snickers with you.

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  7. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I have opted out of giving candy these days. There are many things that interfere, including work schedules some years, depending on the day of the week that Halloween lands on. I used to love doing this, but now the numbers of kids that come by is unpredictable, and I am notoriously undisciplined with the leftover candy. So I just do not allow it in the house anymore.

    The real question regarding Snicker is this: frozen or room temperature.

    Frozen for me.

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    1. At our house licorice is the real challenge. Husband absolutely loves it, especially the salty Danish stuff that most Americans abhor. I gave him a pound of it for his birthday, which was nine days ago, and it’s all gone. I got four pieces, he ate the rest. I buy it in large quantities and hide it in my underwear drawer where he’d never think to look for it, and dole it out whenever I think he needs or deserves a treat.

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      1. Not long ago I made a discovery I wish I had not made. I’ve always had a weakness for red licorice. But there are several brands of red licorice that can seriously call themselves “gourmet” food items. And, oh my, the difference.

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    3. Are you kidding, Jacque? Isn’t eating frozen candy extra hard on your teeth? Mine are in danger of crumbling from just eating an apple these days.

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      1. I am not kidding. But I also rarely have a Sinckers in the house so it is, at most a yearly thing. But when it happens it does not seem to hurt my teeth.

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  8. Being out in the country on a dead end road, I never got to go trick or treating. I do remember having some costumes and stopping at Grandma or Grandpa’s house.
    And in my later teens, dressing up and going to a party and some random girl kissed me. Ah, to be young and foolish.
    And it was the day after Halloween we found the stolen car in my field that I wrote about last week.

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  10. We get no kids in apartment building. When our kids were small we drove them to neighbors because we lived on Hwy 61, a dangerous highway. And to friends in town or out in country. We went to about 12-15 places I think. Sandy brought our small children in costume into nursing home. My how the residents loved that, one of reasons our two have always been comfortable talking to older people.
    I am neither a fan nor an opponent of the holiday. Kind of cool how some plunge into, which my son does. His 8 year old son has little interest in it.

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        1. We used to bring Bernie to see Ken, and all the residents loved it, though Ken was oblivious at that point. Bernie, of course, loved all of the attention.

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  11. Will read later – we always have salted peanuts in the shell – which may be why we only get about 4 trick-or-treaters. Awfully salty, but I figure it’s a good foil for all the sugar… they can grab a handful or two most years, but last year I bagged them, and probably will again.

    Something popular in Winona is “Trunk-or-treat”, where some organized group finds a parking lot, circles up the “wagons” with trunks open (I guess you back in) and exchange treats. Here are a bunch of ideas, but these look more like individual ones… https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/halloween-ideas/g28747729/trunk-or-treat-ideas/

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        1. Two Almond Joys.
          My Dad died a few hours ago. Sad but expected. He was a nut! My Mom died on June 6, D-Day. October 22 will be Nutty Dad Day.

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        3. Sorry for your loss, Wes. I’ll have a handful of peanuts in his honor, and send comforting thoughts your way. May he rest in peace.

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  13. VS, I’d just like to say that I love that you so enthusiastically embrace every opportunity to celebrate. What a great gift to have given YA, even if she’s too young to appreciate it yet.

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  16. Trick or treat here is now organised by the town hall. The first time was one of the best, in my opinion. There might have been a meal laid out somewhere for the parents, grandparents etc (one fiesta blends into another), then we finally trooped round to the Ajuntament (Town Hall), where the kids were just finishing a party run by some of the village girls. I think that was the only year there was a party. I had no idea what was going on. But the kids had all been primed. Everyone had to have a bag, eventually they were turned loose en masse, to knock on doors. There was evidently a set route, and the people knew we were coming. The kids just went from door to door, not every kid went to every door, there were just too many kids, but every open door would see a rapid handover of sweets, as we call them, and it was fun and fascinating to watch. Parents would slip on ahead, ready to be at their own door. Jane had a big dish of sweets ready, but our little street wasn’t covered. I forget what happened to the sweets. What?
    Year by year, kids would start branching out, and more villagers would be ready for them. And they’ve come down our street at least twice. I sneaked a whole bag into my Spanish teacher’s son’s hand, and he held the damn thing up for everyone to see. Wasn’t supposed to do that. I don’t know if it’s happening this year, we’ve missed out nearly every other fiesta.

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  17. There are other books called that. If it is by Dr. Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, it is right. I don’t bake it anymore have not for more than a year. It makes Sandy sick and despite no kneading, it is painful for me to make.

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