Trick or Treat... for Presents? 🎃 Thu, Oct 24, 2019

When I was young, my family adopted this Halloween "tradition" that seems to be unique only to us. My parents wanted me and my brothers to have the fun experience of trick-or-treating on Halloween night... but since they were more health-conscious, they despised the resulting haul of candy that lingered in the house afterwards. So at some point, my parents starting offering us this deal: that after we went trick-or-treating, we could choose 10 pieces of candy to keep, and trade in the rest in exchange for a present. 

We eventually always traded in; I can't remember once instance where we didn't exchange for a present.  The tricky part was that you couldn't see the gift first—it was wrapped—so you just had to gamble. However, the caliber of gifts offered for this Halloween exchange was smartly chosen by my parents so we'd feel like it was worth the trade (they had to be good enough gifts to encourage a child to sacrifice a sack full of hard-earned candy after all).

So after dumping out the night's haul on the dining room table, we'd carefully select our 10 pieces or barter with each other for candy we liked better. As we got older, we knew which houses to hit that gave out the best candy to maximize those 10 pieces (hello rich houses on the hill that doled out full-size candy bars)... plus there was no rule on how much we ate as we went trick or treating (though you can only each so much)! 😉

I'm pretty sure this was my mom's idea, and we never knew exactly where she took our candy that we traded in... she would never give up that secret, and to this day I still don't know!