Each October, we enter the spooky season, and everyone is rather excited to walk the streets to scare people, or just to have fun. But even with the typical traditions continuing like decorations, events and trick-or-treating, it doesn’t feel like Halloween.

Now, it is still Halloween with these traditions, but it’s rather the spirit that I feel has been weakened over the years. Whether that would be age, traditional changes, or even just the biggest holiday that everyone looks forward to at the end of the year, there’s some things that I believe affect the spirit. Speaking of the biggest holiday, Christmas is typically what is causing the spirit of Halloween to die down. Recently, I’ve been seeing Christmas-themed products on shelves, ready to be sold.

This bothers me because we’re still far from the holiday season. It’s likely because the retailers are maximizing their profits, but it could also present the customer with a mental budget for the holiday season. This is a smart marketing tactic for retailers because if retailers don’t get their Christmas items in stock early, they risk losing profits.

Aside from the inevitable holiday, age plays a part in the Halloween spirit. We lose some of the “practices” that we were intensely focused on as a child, but we develop interests that most adults might enjoy doing on Halloween.

As a child, we would typically get into costumes and go door-to-door to receive candy or any treats that people were passing out. However, the tradition of trick-or-treating and dressing up seems to be dying out as you’re growing up.

Speaking of trick-or-treating, the main thing that doesn’t seem interesting is the addition of “trunk-or-treating.” This is when the community creates a small event for people to trick-or-treat during the day.

While trunk-or-treating creates some form of safety for young children, it does remove some of the fun in trick-or-treating. It could also present the idea that trunk-or-treating is the only time to receive candy, which ruins the fun for children who would like to go trick-or-treating.

Although Halloween still seems to be going strong, it doesn’t feel the same as it did back when we were younger.