Halloween Around the Country: Trunk-or-treat | Kids Out and About Buffalo <

Halloween Around the Country: Trunk-or-treat

Trunk-or-Treat: A Halloween Tradition for Many U.S. Kids

by Debra Ross, Publisher, KidsOutAndAbout

One of the fun parts of watching KidsOutAndAbout.com expand outside the Northeast has been finding out about traditions that are practiced in other parts of the country. Our KidsOutAndAbout editors farther west of us have told us about a tradition called Trunk-or-Treat that sounds like a fun, safe alternative to evening Halloween trick-or-treating from house to house. When we investigated further, we found that a few folks here in the Northeast DO celebrate Trunk-or-Treat, mostly churches. And so the bottom of this article features all upcoming Trunk-or-Treat celebrations for this area.

Our editors from several KidsOutAndAbout regions tell us below how Trunk-or-Treat is celebrated in their necks of the woods.

Stacy in Houston

Stacy's paragraph

Holly in Salt Lake City

Trunk-or-treat is hugely popular in the LDS wards (local churches) here in SLC. Some local businesses also offer it as a family Halloween event for their employees. It is thought to be safer than trick-or-treating since kids are in a confined area, only getting candy from people in their trusted community.

How it works: Those who are invited to participate in a trunk-or-treat event park their car in a designated lot, decorate their trunk in some sort of theme (usually Halloweeny), and pull up a chair and a bag/bowl of candy. When the cars are all ready to go, costumed kiddos come out and beg for candy/treats at each person's car. Trunk-or-treat events also feature a contest to reward the person with the best decorated trunk.

Some trunk-or-treat events are huge. They include other activities such as chili cook-offs, bouncy houses, games, etc. If the trunk-or-treat event is one of the larger ones, and especially if it's held on Halloween night, families often choose to exclusively take part in the trunk-or-treat activities and forgo the regular door-to-door trick-or-treating. This can be hard on the families who don't take part in the trunk-or-treat event since no one is at home to offer them candies at the houses. When this is the case, these families can pile into cars and head to other neighborhoods where door-to-door trick-or-treating is still the norm. It isn't unusual to see minivans full of costumed kids spilling out into the streets of neighborhoods that have developed a reputation for traditional trick-or-treating.

In addition to trunk-or-treating and trick-or-treating, SLC also has a lot of other ways for kids to gather treats and celebrate the season. Many local cities have days where kids can trick-or-treat through their city hall offices, and malls offer trick-or-treating at their shops. We have many of these events listed on our Halloween activity page, so if you're looking for ways to get some extra use out of those Halloween costumes, get some ideas here: http://saltlakecity.kidsoutandabout.com/content/halloween-activities-and....

Pat in Saint Louis

Pat's paragraph

Sarah in the Northwest Detroit Suburbs (?):

Sarah's paragraph

 


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Photo credit: Stacy Curtis

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