Corey Mintz is the author of The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, and What Comes After.
Georgia Richardson prepares to trick-or-treat on Oct. 31, 2022 in Houston, Texas. Writer Corey Mintz says he only just learned that every parent has a scheme for how trick-or-treated candy is stored, divided, distributed or taken away.Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America
As our daughter has grown older, Halloween has become the premier holiday in our household. Now 5, she not only has an answer for “What are you going to be for Halloween?” (Batgirl), but anticipates the night in advance, knowing it will end with a mountain of candy. Now my wife and I have to figure out what to do with the loot.
When I was a kid, I did whatever I wanted with my Halloween candy. Hidden in my closet, I chose a piece to eat, in place of breakfast, on my November walks to school. Until a few years ago – when my friend gave me a bite-sized Snickers, stolen from her daughter’s Halloween stash, telling me, “We all do it” – I had no idea that everyone has their own scheme for how Halloween candy is stored, divided, distributed or taken away. For kids, cutting up the bounty into rows of candy bars, Tootsies, chip bags etc. is an introduction to inventory management (or OCD). For parents, it’s an intrusive demand to teach some lessons in self-control. But what is the best method for dealing with the three pounds of candy our children bring home on Oct. 31?
We grown-ups can buy our own treats, but there is nothing so sweet as candy stolen from a child. So first, if you’re going to steal candy from your child, as we are, I recommend that it happen before they have a chance to sort or, worse, to count and record the inventory.
Many classic short cons involve switching a container of valuable goods for a bag of less valuable goods. This requires the mark to lose sight of the bag, if only for a moment. When our child comes home with that bucket or pillowcase stuffed with candy, the first thing they must do is to wash their hands. That is our window of opportunity to skim the loot. Even better if we can get our child to take a bath. This method favours a two-parent household, where one parent can take the child to the bathroom, extending the washing time by accusing the child of not scrubbing the backs of her hands, while the other goes through the bag of candy to set aside any peanut-butter cups or full-sized Snickers bars (the white whale of Halloween candy). Afterward, when they dump the bag’s contents onto the living-room rug, their first look at the take is reduced, ensuring that they never have a chance to miss those desired items.
Children trick-or-treat during the Charlestown Halloween Parade in Boston, Mass., on Oct. 31, 2018. According to this writer, parents' first opportunity to skim their child's loot is when they first lose sight of it: when they have to wash their hands after returning home.BRIAN SNYDER/Reuters
However, parents who leave the wrappers from stolen Snickers in the kitchen trash bin are begging to be caught. If we’re going to pluck our favourite snacks from our child’s collection, we cannot leave wrappers in our home; not in the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, anywhere. Our kids will find these and they will ask questions. Like a corpse that we don’t want traced back to us, we must get the wrappers out of the house. The dumpster behind a pharmacy should do well, as technically we haven’t committed a crime, so police can’t subpoena the alley’s camera footage.
Many parents inspect their kids’ candy, checking for opened or tampered packages or, as was discovered two years ago near us, cannabis candies. This is another opportunity for sleight-of-hand theft, though some parents are transparent about taking their cut at this stage. My brother-in-law calls this the “daddy tax.”
Once the haul is on the floor, the sorting can begin. Halloween is a triumphant confluence of pleasures: the calming rhythm of neatly organizing objects, placing little things inside big things, arranging colourful packages into neat stacks, loose piles or tightly regimented lines, combined with the greedy glee of appraising one’s assets, visually. The joy of abundance, for a resource that is usually limited, combined with the momentary thrill of unilateral control and unfettered access (until you’re told to eat three pieces and put the rest away) is a high like no other.
I’ve heard many methods for doling out candy, and they are all problematic.
One parent tells me that her kids can have as much candy as they want in November. On Dec. 1, it all goes into the gingerbread-house pool. I don’t think we can do this. Our daughter eats so little, with dinner often being no more than three noodles and two strawberries. Additional treats suppress her appetite. A month of unlimited candy means she’ll never eat any real food.
Many families practice a tradition known as the Candy Fairy, Candy Witch or Switch Witch. This supernatural creature collects unwanted and excess candy and leaves a gift in its place.Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America
A lot of people add the candy as a daily treat in their kid’s lunchbox. Here in Manitoba, nursery (aka junior kindergarten) and kindergarten are half-days. Last year, for a while I sent her to school with a treat. But given the 2.5 hours of school between breakfast and lunch, a single cookie only made her skip any of the other food I packed (she also had a teacher who was giving out candy in class). Maybe next year, when she spends a whole day at school, I’ll be less stingy about including a treat in her lunch.
Many families practice a tradition known as the Candy Fairy, Candy Witch or Switch Witch. This supernatural creature collects unwanted and excess candy and leaves a gift in its place. Kids sort out the candy they want most, picking their favourites, or a week’s worth. The remainder is left in a bag on the porch. The Witch or Fairy picks it up and shares it with others in the fairy realm (most likely depositing it in the break room of the parents’ office), leaving something such as art supplies or a book in its place.
But do I really want to introduce a new, fictional deity? Our daughter has a keen interest in knowing what is real versus pretend. Batgirl, the Joker, dragons, witches and Draculas, she understands to be pretend. Police, cheetahs and the moon are real.
I am also toying with a more controversial method: eat-as-much-as-you-want on Oct. 31. I’m a proponent of letting kids make decisions, even bad ones, within certain safety margins. Allowing her to overdose on sugar so she learns how it feels, and can better make her own decisions on how much is too much, may cause Halloween night to end on an unpleasant note. But it might set her up to make more informed choices. I’d rather teach her to make smart choices than for us to tell her she can’t have more of the thing she loves, for reasons she can’t understand.