A Partial History Of Trick Or Treating, Mutual Need, Compulsory Kindness, And The Immortal Full-Size Candy Bar House

Everyone remembers their neighborhood’s full-size candy bar house. After moving away from Los Angeles in 1996 and living many other places, I’m back within walking distance of ours, a large white house that seemed a mansion to me then, tucked up in the Glendale foothills. I can still picture warm yellow light spilling out of the front door, the top of the owner’s head bent low over a plastic cauldron full of Snickers and Butterfingers. Of course, a handful of fun-size candies equals a full-size candy bar in volume, but it has nothing on the sheer wild thrill of a whole, entire, grocery store checkout lane candy bar for a child. To give me — a perfect stranger! — a whole, entire candy bar was the wildest, most extravagant act of generosity I could imagine.

I’ve talked about this with a lot of people, and almost all of them remember their own full-size candy bar house. (My friend Peter’s full-size candy bar house was Henry Winkler’s.) It goes without saying that mine is now the neighborhood’s full-size candy bar house. For the cost of about 60 cents* per child, I will achieve immortality.

Many people make charitable donations during the winter holidays, and gift-giving to friends and relatives is part of many holidays, but Halloween is the only modern American holiday where handing out treats to perfect strangers is a fundamental part of the celebration itself. And yet, unlike charitable…