I don't remember the exact year (sometime during the 1990s) I stopped handing out treats on Halloween, but I remember why I stopped. It was the year a group of very large teenage boys dressed in military uniforms and carrying fake(?) weapons came to our door twice in the same evening—and vigorously denied it when I tried to tell them I'd already given them treats. The same year, a mother carrying an infant appeared at the door with a treat bag for each of them. (The baby—not a toddler—was in costume; she wasn't.) There was also the pregnant woman who sheepishly told me she was trick or treating "for the baby." They annoyed me because my children had recently stopped trick or treating when they reached middle school; they thought they'd outgrown it.

I do remember the year I trick or treated for the last time. It was the 1960s, I was 12 years old, and at every other house the person who answered the door asked me, "Aren't you a little big to be trick or treating?" I don't know what happened in the 1990s, but more and more teenagers and adults have been trick or treating since then. I don't like it.

The holiday has changed a lot since my kids outgrew trick or treating and I stopped handing out treats. Each year more yards are decorated for the holiday and the decorations become more elaborate (second only to Christmas decorations in sales). Terri Sapienza touches on the subject of adult participation in Halloween in a Washington Post column, quoting author Lesley Pratt Bannatyne as saying that adults started dressing up in costumes after the 1978 movie Halloween came out. Sapienza also quotes a clinical psychologist who says the holiday has become more adult driven and it becomes a competition among adults.

I don't have anything against teens and adults celebrating Halloween. I enjoy creative yard decorations. I think phony haunted houses are stupid, but they don't hurt me. Adults who love to wear costumes seem a little strange to me, but they don't hurt me, either. Adult Halloween parties don't bother me. For a while all the sit coms had Halloween shows about April Fools–type practical jokes; I never understood the connection since they were nothing like traditional Halloween tricks, but I didn't have to watch them. No, the only thing that bothers me is the trick or treating.

Someone I know who lives between Kietzke Lane and the veteran's hospital has had entire families come to her door on Halloween without costumes. A few weeks ago a local TV station interviewed a couple of college students shopping for costumes. "Why not?" one giggled. "Free candy!"

There's the conflict—their greed runs up against my stinginess, and I win by not being home on Halloween. It's not fair to the little kids, but if you hand out treats to them you have to do it for everyone. (I am not going to open my door and say no to people who are big enough to hurt me or my house.) I refuse to buy candy for a bunch of greedy strangers who can easily go out and buy it for themselves.