Trick-or-Treat Vs. Trunk-or-Treat

by Isabella Clement

Over the past five years, alternatives to keep families safe during the Pandemic in 2020 have made no exceptions to exist during the colder months. Trunk-or-treat was an idea created back in the 90s even, displaying a safer route for families who were anxious to let their children roam the streets late at night. Recently, trunk-or-treat made a comeback in 2020 with the Pandemic in place. It provided a safer and socially distanced appropriate approach to Halloween with parents with kids who were eager to still go out and trick-or-treat. Even after the events and social distancing for COVID have died out in the past couple of years, trunk-or-treat seems to be one of the traditions that has stuck in this day and age.

The idea of trunk-or-treat is pretty simplistic; just like trick-or-treating, kids dress up in Halloween costumes, while the adults decorate their cars with fun or scary decorations that you would normally see on houses. The adults or participants hand out candy to the young kids, then the kids move on to the next car. Typically these events are created by Churches, schools, or local communities during the daytime to make the experience more enjoyable and easier on the parents. It provides a safer environment for small children who may grow tired quickly from walking from house to house, and it keeps them within eyesight of the parents.

Now, is it really better than the old tradition of trick-or-treating? There’s really no right or wrong answer to this question, it’s solely based on opinion. When gathering others’ opinions, it varied between each response, but most people could agree that it was a safer option for people with children under the age of five, but they do miss having a lot of kids coming up to their doors with their costumes. The typical responses that were received by adults who have kids were that sometimes they almost preferred trunk-or-treat to trick-or-treating. Halloween in Buffalo has always been a hit or miss with the weather, so being able to do it in the daytime, on a day parents know that their children can dress appropriately for the weather is the better move. The other half of the responses given by people without kids displayed a sense of melancholy towards the recent lack of kids coming door-to-door in costumes. While most of them understand the causes of the recent trunk-or-treat events, the nostalgia of having your doorbell rung every two minutes and seeing a bunch of kids with wide chocolate-covered smiles on their faces was heartwarming.

With safety precautions and being easier on the young ones, trunk-or-treat may be an option to take, but it is solely up to the parents. Trunk-or-treat could be a great option if anxiety takes over, or it couldn’t be.