The ancient Halloween custom of Trick-or-Treat seems to have fallen out of favor.

The fashion these days seems to be to be the Halloween Party.

Lots of churches hold Halloween Parties, and a few clubs, and no few Highly-Engaged parents. The basic premise is that, instead of wandering the darkened streets, kids dress up in store-bought costume and sit around in a large, noisy, well-lit rooms gorging on Safeway cupcakes and getting cherry Kool-aid all over their rented outfits. Call me crazy, but that sounds a lot like every kids birthday party I ever attended, and not particularly spooky.

Another growing alternative to traditional Trick-or-Treat is that of the mini-mall variety. Instead of wandering around the darkened streets, kids get to march down straight, noisy, well-lit sidewalks and gather discount treats from merchants. Maybe I’m missing something, but accompanying my parents to the grocery store doesn’t seem to jibe with the holiday’s profound mystery. And note to merchants: Any coupon, even one for free stuff, is not a “treat”, it’s a marketing trick.

One espoused benefit of the Halloween Party/Mall Crawl vis-a-vis genuine Trick-or-Treating is that they provide secure environments in which childrens’ intake and behavior can be more easily monitored and controlled. Another is that, because the events are narrowly scheduled, participation can be more easily penciled into parents’ day-planners. Most often cited, however, is the perceived safety to be found in large numbers, tightly confined. Safety is, after all, the greatest of the modern virtues.

It’s also a shame.

When I was a kid, Trick-or-Treat was Halloween.

Sure, then as now, that curious holiday is a mental process that begins with the bone-deep thrill that comes when you see the season’s first TV commercial featuring a Jack-o-Lantern, or a vampire bat. But the thrill I felt was not rooted in anticipation of bobbing for apples or standing in line in front of Radio Shack, but on the vivid memory of Halloween Night, the strangeness of being outside, alone after dark, the weird anonymity I felt, and the excitement of blood-curdling possibilities that I utterly believed could happen, but didn’t really believe ever would.

Halloween should be macabre, not manufactured. Trick-or-Treat is Halloween on a kids’ own terms. On that night, after the sun went down and the Jack-o-Lanterns came out, I was filled with a delicious, giddy apprehension. All the weird and horrid things that seemed like excellent fiction the rest of the year suddenly seemed plausible, even probable.

On Halloween Night, the universe was off its plumb. Quiet neighborhood streets were haunted by the unseen, the cavernous shadows between homes populated by imaginations running on over-drive. Neighbors’ houses I knew very well became mansions of menace, each one watched over by short, squat demons whose breath carried the secret smell of scorched pumpkin. Pressing the doorbell took a mischievous kind of courage one could only feel on Halloween, and there was an odd thrill of triumph each time a friendly grown-up opened the door and presented candy instead of drooling fangs.

It was all just make-believe, and we knew it. But it was also very real, and we knew that, too.

Even today I can’t catch a whiff of burning pumpkin without flashing back to little knots of my costumed contemporaries appearing out of the darkness, and disappearing back into it just as quickly; to housewives wearing witches’ hats and door handles festooned with fake cobwebs; to scary records playing on outdoor speakers somewhere across the valley; to demonic flaming eyes glaring down from porches set back among the trees, luring me to certain destruction, or maybe a full-sized candy bar, or maybe something in between.

Anything could happen. It never did, but it could, and that was a powerful difference.

Halloween was special because it wasn’t just a party, and it wasn’t just free candy, and it wasn’t just TV Jack-o-Lanterns and rubber vampire bats. It was a nightmare come to life, but one that unfolded along known lines and could be met, and mastered, by a child without the interference of adults.

Removed from malls and multi-purpose rooms, Trick-or-Treat is the imagination set free, terror on a leash, your darkest and dearest dreads pressing up against a thin, black curtain. It is fear, and enchantment, and independence, and discovery.  It’s the beating heart of Halloween, and without it the holiday is a tame and toothless affair.

And that’s a shame.