More people than ever are celebrating the spookiest day of the year, but Halloween trick-or-treating may not look the same for today's kids as it did for their parents and grandparents.
Greeting young witches, goblins, fairy princesses and superheroes at the door with a basket of candy is still a favorite Halloween ritual for many American families, and there are plenty of children eager to oblige them.
About three-fourths (74 percent) of Americans plan to celebrate Halloween this year, up from 69 percent a decade ago, according to the National Retail Federation's 2026 Halloween survey.
But traditional trick-or-treating hasn't kept pace with Halloween's growing popularity. Participation rebounded after the pandemic but never fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels and has declined again in recent years, according to the retail group.
An Associated Press-NORC poll last year showed a similar trend. About a third of U.S. adults planned to hand out Halloween candy, down from 42 percent in 2019. And a YouGov poll earlier this month found that just 23 percent of adults had taken or planned to take a child trick-or-treating this fall.
Today, according to the National Retail Federation, many families are embracing new traditions alongside the old ones. Those with young children are especially likely to attend pumpkin patches, trunk-or-treat events and other community celebrations. At trunk-or-treats, often hosted by churches, schools or community groups, children collect candy from the decorated trunks of vehicles parked in a designated area rather than going door to door.
Although the surveys show national trends, trick-or-treating is alive (or maybe dead, in the zombie sense) and thriving in many neighborhoods.
What's the state of trick-or-treating where you live? Do costumed kids still come around with their pumpkin buckets, or have the neighborhood sidewalks grown quieter?
Are trunk-or-treats and organized Halloween events replacing the old door-to-door tradition in your community? Do you prefer these events, or do you think kids miss out on something when they don't roam the neighborhood collecting candy?
And if you hand out candy, are you seeing fewer trick-or-treaters than you did five or 10 years ago? Has that changed how you celebrate Halloween?
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Block Talk is an exclusive Patch series on neighborhood etiquette — and readers provide the answers. If you have a topic you'd like us to consider, email beth.dalbey@patch.com with "Block Talk" as the subject line.
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