Trick or Treat

Tonight was the annual Trick or Treat night here in Mechanicsburg. It is a unique time on our block. Our block is pretty dark and doesn’t have many street light, plus, there are not many houses that participate – so that means that it’s even darker since those houses don’t have their lights on.

But for those of us who do hand out candy, we are mostly on our porches or on the sidewalk. It’s a similar feeling to when it snows and we are all out shoveling out our vehicles.

While I don’t particularly like Halloween (it’s dark and doesn’t exactly lift up Christ Jesus), I do participate in Trick or Treat. I remember growing up and walking by houses where you could see people “hiding out” in their basements. I use to think of them as weird and avoid their houses. Avoid them that night and actually throughout the year. I don’t want any kids thinking the same about our house. Quite the opposite in fact. I want our house to shine brightly in our neighborhood and to be known as a house where we love kids and it’s a safe place.

In our 15+ years of marriage, Beth and I have done many different things on trick or treat night. We have hidden, we have found something else to do that evening, and more recently, we have participated. Everyone needs to make their own decisions about tonight, and this has been ours. We see it more of a community building night.

So ….

We hand out the BIG candy bars!!! We don’t want to just blend in, we want people to remember us as people who love kids, who have a good time, and who go the extra mile to make people smile.

Tonight, we handed out 168 Full-size candy bars. I just want to report that the top three bars to go (in order) were …
1. Hershey Bar
2. Reese’s
3. Nestle Bar

The last to go were the Baby Ruth’s, followed by snickers, and butterfinger. I was most surprised that the snickers bars lasted as long as they did.

We have given out the full size bars for the past number of years. We even had two families that said they chose to come to our house early in the evening because of us giving out the bars in years past.

It’s fun making people smile!