Halloween Etiquette

Can you even use the word etiquette in conjunction with Halloween? After all, it’s the holiday where youngsters threaten to harm you or your property if you fail to give them candy. What sort of proper behavior is involved with that? None.

I had my first West Virginia Halloween experience a couple weeks ago. Lots of cute costumes showed up at my door and most of the kids were polite and well-mannered. “Thank you,” was their common refrain after the expected “Trick or Treat.”

But there was that one boy, probably aged fourteen or fifteen, who was sick and had no business being out. I could hear his hacking cough while he was still a block away from my house. He approached my seat on the front porch, coughing directly into my face, and rather than opening his sack so that I could quickly drop in treats and get him on his way, he insisted on looking at the two pieces of candy in my hand.

“I don’t like those.” Cough, cough.

He came closer, looked at the bucket in my lap, and pointed to some different candies. “I’ll take those,” he said. Didn’t even say Trick or Treat. And he most certainly didn’t thank me after I dropped them in his now-open bag.

Back in my childhood, kids weren’t so choosy. We thankfully took what was given. If there were items we didn’t like, we gave them to a sibling or a friend. If there were no takers, the candy met the trash can.

Then there was the little girl—perhaps eight years old or so—who came to my porch and said her mom sent her to get candy not only for her, but also for her brothers. They were, she said, too lazy to walk to the house.

“How many brothers do you have?” I asked.

“Two.” She pointed to them, sitting on the curb in front of my yard. A woman who I presumed to be their mother, stood nearby.

I had been giving two pieces of candy to each child approaching my door. For this one, though, I decided one per child was enough, so gave her three pieces. That was about all her small hands could hold anyway.

What would have been an appropriate response to these kids? Tell the boy to take or leave what was offered? Tell the girl her brothers would have to walk to my door if they wanted candy? I didn’t want to be rude like them, but really….

What are parents teaching these days? Because these children obviously needed some instruction in etiquette. Even for Halloween.