by Jamie Belnap

STAFF WRITER

One of my best childhood Halloween memories is of dressing up as a tube of toothpaste with a human-size toothbrush for a school party, eating a warm bowl of homemade chili prior to donning my costume yet again before hitting the sidewalks in search of treats, and then returning to my warm house to dump my candy on the floor and sort it into categories -- giveaways, keep-as-needed, and so-good-I-might-want-to-consider-hiding-it.

While some of these cultural practices remain intact, others have changed significantly over the years.

I don't trick-or-treat anymore. But the children who do seem to no longer ring neighborhood doorbells for treats. Instead they walk from car trunk to minivan trunk in broad daylight, participating in a cynical new ritual known as "trunk or treat." What's the fun in this? Although, these new-generation trick-or-treaters might not know otherwise, Halloween really is more than a Wal-Mart princess costume and a few dozen minivans in a church parking lot.

I grew up in a neighborhood in Harrisville dubbed "the colony," because the street names were those of the early 13 colonies -- Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, etc. In the colony, 15 years ago, our doorbell would start ringing as early as 4:30 p.m. until nearly 10 p.m. Trick-or-treaters came from all over to work our neighborhood because of the vast number of houses in one area with no dangerous roads to cross. Parents would just drop off their kids and come back a couple of hours later to pick them up. My dad would hand out so much candy that after we would come home from our own little expedition he would start putting handfuls into fellow treaters' buckets just to be rid of it and be able to turn the light off. Now, my dad might as well leave the light off to begin with because he gets significantly less treaters -- or tricksters for that matter.

Some say the drop in trick-or-treaters is the result of safety issues -- whether unsafe candy or unsafe people walking the streets hiding behind masks. More likely it's paranoia as big media pumps the holiday full of fears and potential catastrophes. Maybe it's enough to scare us into turning trick-or-treating into a meaningless, mechanical daytime activity where children receive mass quantities of candy for no apparent reason.

Trick-or-treating in late medieval times was a practice of "souling," when poor people would go door to door receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day. I couldn't find anything about the history of trunk-or-treating in my research.

Keeping your kids safe this Halloween doesn't have to mean relocating the time and place they do their trick-or-treating. It just means a few rules or family guidelines need to be enforced: 1) Don't let your kids frolic about by themselves; 2) Inspect their loot when they return home; 3) If you're nervous about a particular house on your route, skip it.

So when you hear all those warnings about pins and poison this Halloween, use caution and common sense. But don't just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child and that your own children look forward to months in advance.