Growing up, my friends and I would count down the days until Halloween – because we knew that once the calendar read October 31st, we could dress up and beg our neighbors for candy. We would spend weeks planning a group costume, mapping our Trick-or-Treating route, and creating a candy trading system. For years, this was our Halloween ritual. It wasn’t until our freshman year of high school that we began to wonder how much longer we could keep this up. Instead of maintaining our traditions, we listened to society telling us we were ‘too old’ to partake in child-like Halloween festivities. For 3 years, we put a pause on Trick-or-Treating… but this year, however, we decided to embrace our last Halloween before college by resuming our candy-collecting. 

At first, we were slightly embarrassed and felt out of place walking around in costumes alongside the neighborhood kids who had yet to celebrate a double-digit birthday. As we approached the first house with our buckets in hand, we began to fear that people would turn us away. We were met with exactly the opposite reaction – every house we went to complimented our costumes and told us how much they liked seeing older kids participate in Halloween traditions. We continued moving through the neighborhood with confidence, but also with a sense of nostalgia. Knowing that this would be our last real year to Trick or Treat made it hard to go from house to house with smiles on our faces, but we didn’t let that stop us from enjoying our night.

Although many people think that Trick-or-Treating ends at age 10, this fun Halloween activity has no age limit. Next year, I highly recommend throwing on a costume, grabbing a few friends, and acting like children for the night!