Trunk or Trick? How Halloween traditions are changing in Alabama

Jackie Baston cannot recall attending a trunk or treat until her organization first assembled one four years ago.

It has since become Calera Main Street’s biggest annual event, and Thursday’s gathering underscored its continuing popularity: More than 2,500 people showed up in a city of around 17,000 residents, to participate in a one-night trunk or treat. Sixty decorated vehicles were part of the tailgate with owners handing out candy and other goodies within the city’s downtown courtyard.

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“You mostly see these in church parking lots and smaller community groups doing it,” said Baston, executive director of Calera Main Street formed to promote revitalization of the city’s downtown district. “It came about as a safe and consolidated way to trick or treat. That’s fine. For tired working parents, it’s easier to take them through a parking lot than a neighborhood.”

Similar stories abound in Alabama and beyond this spooky season as churches, community groups and city governments provide parents alternatives to traditional trick-or-treating.

But trunk-or-treat events are also stirring a Halloween debate, and one that is likely to last for the foreseeable future: Will the controlled environment of trunk or treat, occurring often in a single parking lot, replace the frenzied neighborhood crawl of traditional trick-or-treating?

“I can see it happening eventually, especially in places where crime is higher and where more bad incidences occur,” said Traci Phillips, 53, of Scottsboro, who recently weighed in on the debate on Facebook. “The culture changes and trunk or treats are a good way to adapt to our newer safety concerns, in my opinion.”

‘Mutually exclusive’

To be certain, trunk or treat is nothing new and has been occurring for decades often in the form of church-based fall festivals.

The New York Times first featured the growth of trunk or treat’s popularity in 2006, and media reports have existed on the events for well over 15 years.

Traditional trick-or-treating, which has been around in the U.S. for over 90 years, also remains Halloween’s most popular activity, according to limited polling on the subject. A 2020 poll conducted by Morning Consult, on behalf of the National Confectioners Association, showed that 80% of the general public including 90% of millennial parents view trick-or-treating as irreplaceable.

And most of Alabama’s trunk-or-treat events at churches, schools and town squares occur before Oct. 31, as a way not to collide with the one-night of trick-or-treating.

The two traditions seem, for now, to be occurring in harmony.

“If we’re not limiting it to Halloween night, they don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” said Robert Laird, professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Alabama, and a Tuscaloosa resident who says trick-or-treating is “one of the few times we see some of the neighbors” during the year.

‘Safe alternative’

But in some of Alabama’s largest cities, trunk or treat serves as a so-called “safe alternative” to traditional trick-or-treating.

One of Alabama’s biggest alternatives occurs each year in Montgomery, in the form of the “Spooktacular.” This year’s version takes place from 5:30-8 p.m. on Monday at Garrett Coliseum.

The event is hosted by Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham’s office. This year’s Spooktacular is anticipated to draw “probably our largest crowd,” Cunningham said, and will eclipse the more than 3,300 children and 50 vendors who participated during last year’s event.

It’s also an event that Cunningham sees as a potential lifeline for continuing Halloween in Montgomery. He said that his office receives phone calls from residents pleading that they don’t want people knocking on their doors on Oct. 31.

“I feel that traditional trick-or-treating of going to the neighborhood will not bounce back,” said Cunningham, who likes having law enforcement and the community at one location and at the same time on Halloween night.

“Most people don’t know their neighbors or know the people in their neighborhood,” he added. “People don’t know what’s going on behind those doors in their neighbors’ homes.”

The push for more trunk-or-treat events comes at a time when crime is a hot political topic ahead of the midterm elections, and as cities like Montgomery and elsewhere in Alabama struggle with gun-related violence and homicides.

“We see people posting so much hate and crime issues on social media, and this will only help fuel parents not wanting to go door-to-door,” Cunningham said. “I have heard from several people that call us who say they don’t want people coming to their homes like traditional trick-or-treating in the past. Our main focus is to make sure our kids still can enjoy the Halloween experience in a safe atmosphere.”

In Birmingham, the Guiding Light Church is advertising its trunk-or-treat event on Eventbrite. The event has a timely theme called “Stop the Violence.”

Cathy Noye, the church’s minister and administrator of youth, teen and college ministry, said the church’s Halloween night event – which the church annually calls “Hallelujah Night” – is one of its biggest events.

“There is too much gun violence right now and this is a way to get our message out, make it positive and encourage the children and the teens and families to love life,” said Noye, who added that few people will trick or treat on Oct. 31.

In Mobile, where trunk-or-treat events and neighborhood activities abound on Halloween, the traditional activity is also waning, according to Lawrence Battiste, the city’s executive director of public safety.

Battiste said he will leave his front porch light on in hopes that someone will stop by during trick-or-treating.

Rarely, he said, will anyone show up. Only two people have knocked on his door in the past five years.

“I don’t think it’s unsafe for kids to be out knocking on the doors in the majority of our communities,” Battiste said. “But I believe because of the church’s involvement, and the involvement of the communities we live in, you are seeing less and less of young people knocking on doors.”

Dangerous holiday?

Michele Ramsey, associate professor of communication arts and sciences and women’s studies at Penn State Berks in Reading, Pennsylvania, said she is concerned about trunk or treats perceived as “safe alternatives.”

She is also concerned that traditional trick-or-treating is viewed as “unsafe.”

“We know from research, there is virtually no danger in visiting the houses of strangers on Halloween because that urban legend about poisoned candy simply isn’t true,” said Ramsey, referring to unfounded claims of people causing harm with candy distributed to children on Halloween night.

Those concerns were magnified earlier this month when politicians began to raise alarms that candy-colored fentanyl could be distributed to children during Halloween. There is no evidence that drugs will be distributed as part of a sinister trick-or-treating ploy.

Ramsey said it’s illogical to think that trunk or treat is safer than trick-or-treating.

“If a parent is worried about the urban legend of poisoned Halloween candy, what is stopping someone at one of these trunk-or-treat events from doing the very thing the parent is worried about, even if that worry is unfounded?” she said. “Traditional trick-or-treating is just as safe as any other version of the tradition.”

But experts appear to be split over which tradition is the better option.

Maurice Elias, professor of psychology at Rutgers University, said the trunk-or-treat environment offers a better avenue to show off one’s costume and receive positive reactions because of the way they are organized and because they include better lighting.

As for trick-or-treating?

“My sense is that if Halloween did not exist now and someone proposed it, the way typically celebrated, relatively few people would react other than by saying, ‘Are you nuts?’” he said. “Send kids to strangers’ houses? Be on dark streets – often without sidewalks – when the data suggests how risky this is to kids? Getting candy from strangers when we are trying to encourage kids to be healthy and be careful to know the source of the food they are eating?’”

Traditional trick-or-treating leads to annual public service announcements by government agencies warning about children walking on darkened streets. The holiday continues to be viewed as the deadliest for child pedestrians.

“If the goal is to get to know the neighborhood and neighbors, there are better ways,” Elias said.

‘Build community’

The popularity of trunk or treat also comes as more churches open their parking lots and offer a Halloween-related event.

Michael Altman, a professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama, said he has seen the trend as more churches open their parking lots for a trunk-or-treat activity as a way to promote their evangelism.

He said it’s a change from years ago when more conservative churches viewed Halloween as a pagan holiday that embraced evil and images of the devil.

“What we are seeing is more and more churches are less concerned about Halloween, wholesale, and are more wanting to be (culturally) relevant and provide a space for it,” said Altman. “The churches are a major social hub. That means the trunk or treats make a lot of sense.”

Downtown organizations and city governments are also embracing their own events. A trunk or treat hosted by Alexander City’s local government drew around 2,000 people on Thursday and is becoming an event that city officials believe is key to bringing the city’s agencies and the community together.

Piper Barnett, a records clerk with the city who helped organize the event, said that few people trick or treat in Alexander City because houses are often not close to each other, which makes it difficult for young children to walk neighborhoods in search of candy.

“Not too many people do it anymore,” she said. “They participate in various trunk or treats.”

Ramsey, the professor at Penn State Berks, said trunk or treats “certainly have their place” and are a good addition to the holiday if events are open to the public.

But she said that Halloween trick-or-treating can represent one of the few instances when neighbors interact with each other and put aside political and cultural differences for a common, candy-grabbing purpose.

“The wonderful and important thing about trick-or-treating in neighborhoods is that it’s a great community tradition that helps us feel safer and happier in our own neighborhoods,” Ramsey said. “We meet our neighbors and their children, walk our own streets, and collectively enjoy the evening with our neighbors.”

Trunk or treat, she said, doesn’t have the same effect.

“For me, silo-ing ourselves among only those people we already know and have things in common with can contribute to our polarized culture,” Ramsey said. “Halloween brings us together and if we get to know our neighbors, even if we don’t agree politically or we don’t share the same culture, it is much more difficult to demonize them – no pun intended – because we know them as people instead of just political positions or differing cultural practices.”

She added, “Traditional trick-or-treating helps build and maintain stronger living communities and I’m not sure trunk-or-treating accomplishes that goal as well.”

Laird, at the University of Alabama, said the rise in trunk or treat’s popularity reflects changes in society and community structures.

“It might just reflect that neighborhoods are not where people are finding community as much as they might have in the past,” he said. “When I go trunk or treat with my children, the kids play together and the adults are talking. And so, it’s an opportunity to build community with your church group or with other parents at your kid’s school where the event is held.”

Laird said he’s uncertain which of the traditions are better. He noted that trunk or treat underscores a societal emphasis of formalizing play for children that is guided and protected by adults.

“I’m torn, personally, that it’s a disruption of the neighborhood but it’s clearly an effort of the parents to build community in a different location,” he said.

Erin Roberts, 44, of Gaffney, South Carolina – who remembers attending her first trunk-or-treat events at church parking lots while living in Leeds and Pell City from 2005-2008 – said she prefers the trunk-or-treat alternative.

The events, she said, have gotten bigger and more elaborate over the years. People will go “all out to decorate” their vehicles, and that’s part of the draw, Roberts said.

She added, “they are a safer and more fun alternative” than traditional Halloween trick-or-treating.