Let's Talk About...Trunk-or-Treat

Ok. Was I the only one who thought "trunk-or-treat" was a typo?

Seriously.

I soon realized I saw the words too often together for "trunk" to be a typo. But I still didn't understand what trunk-or-treat meant for longer than I want to admit.

What was happening here? And was there really an elephant involved?

I figured it had to be a social distancing remnant of COVID. But after a little googling, I learned trunk-or-treating has been around for at least 10 years, well before COVID. Where have I been?

Let's back up. In case you have been out of touch like me for the past 10 years, trunk-or-treat (which is both a noun and a verb) means people park their cars next to each other, open their trunks, decorate them with a theme and then hand out candy to passing children, who I assume say "trunk-or-treat" instead of "trick-or-treat." Sometimes a game might be involved such as throwing a ball through a hoop before the candy reward.

No elephants involved.

The trunk-themes are endless. Pick a sports team and go wild, make the trunk Cookie Monster's mouth or a giant shark's mouth. Anything Minions, Muppets, Maverick, Marvel or Mario is fair game.

Sounds fun, right?

To me, it sounds like another test of creativity designed to create competition among neighbors. Why is decorating your front porch for Halloween not enough anymore? What happened to a scary dummy, spiderwebs, tombstones and pumpkins? What happened to scaring all the kids in the neighborhood?

I will tell you what is scary. A giant shark mouth attached to a 2-ton hunk of metal just ready to roll over me and eat me at the same time.

Anytime sugar-filled children are surrounded by a mass of mobile machinery in an open lot, a red flag pops up in my mind. There are rolling tires, doors slamming unexpectedly and lots of smelly gym clothes involved whenever a bunch of cars are parked together with their trunks open. I have to wonder whether those emergency brakes are on before letting my children run willy-nilly throughout a packed parking lot.

Trunk-or-treating was intended to be a safer alternative to the more traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating. It mostly started in church parking lots. But in Niwot it is not so much an alternative to trick-or-treating, but an add-on.

It used to be that you would wear your Halloween costume to school, have a class party (or as my son's fourth grade teacher called it, "an observance") and trick-or-treated door-to-door. That was it.

Now, Halloween lasts at least a week.

Children party at an "observance" at school, then sugar up at a trunk-or-treat or two, gather handfuls of Tootsie Rolls while wandering through a business district, maybe go to a Halloween party, and then go trick-or-treating on Halloween night. The resulting sugar high must last well into December.

I don't know about you, but a costume and accompanying make up or mask loses its allure for me after less than one wearing.

I am all for trunk-or-treat, though. As a kid, I would have loved another opportunity to score some candy.

I was recently at Niwot High School's Fall Fest trunk-or-treat and saw the fun up close. Spiderman was there with Deadpool and Captain Marvel, along with Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, firefighters, police officers, Elsa, Snow White, a barnyard of animals, and even a ghost. And those were just the high schoolers.

They all threw balls, tried to remember to say "thank you," and sucked on lollipops as they wandered the parking lot.

I am all for any event that brings families and communities together, even if it is trunk diving.

And what could possibly go wrong after eating too much candy?