Miss Manners: Trick-or-treating part of our culture of begging

Why do we keep up the custom of Halloween trick-or-treating?

It used to be amusing because it was such a titillating reversal of ordinary behavior. Imagine threatening your friends and neighbors to give you handouts!

Except that people complain to Miss Manners that they no longer have to stretch their imaginations. Every other day of the year, children and grown-ups are ringing their doorbells or stopping by their desks to ask for something. All the expectant parents, birthday celebrants, new homeowners and matriculating or graduating students they know – and some they don’t – issue them lists of needs and wishes.

Bridal couples (who are responsible for developing the unbridled gift registry from the simple custom of permitting stores to give out the names of their silver or china patterns upon request) no longer limit themselves to instructing their guests to furnish their living quarters, but direct them to contribute to the mortgage and to pick up wedding and honeymoon costs.

We have become a nation of beggars. And Miss Manners is not referring to the destitute people who unfortunately must resort to desperate measures, but to well-off people whose greed has made them gleeful about seizing upon the resources of others.

The trick, played on those who do not come across, is the social equivalent of wrapping a house with toilet paper: We’ll make you look cheap and mean. How could anyone decent ever refuse a small child, the representative of a worthy cause, a couple in love, a student or anyone else who broadcasts a desire for handouts?

Guests, too, have now learned to put out their hands. Party favors have grown from trinkets that children might find by their plates to expensively stuffed goody bags that are as relentlessly expected and eagerly pounced upon by adults who attend weddings, charity events and award ceremonies. And the richer these people are, the more they get. The Internal Revenue Service has finally noticed that goody bags for movie stars constitute a taxable source of their income, now that the value of these approach an ordinary person’s total income.

But the value seems less important than the feverish quest to get something free, no matter what it is. Why else are clients of expensive hotels stockpiling miniature shampoo bottles?

For hosts who fail to pony up as instructed, the trick is, of course, social condemnation and isolation. But they are also told that they are violating etiquette. Planners of weddings, charity and other public events and children’s parties will insist that small shopping bags full of freebies are a proper part of entertaining. Why else would anyone be expected to bother to go out and socialize?

But why would etiquette encourage this? If it has any interest in the matter, it would be to discourage the lack of decorum that ensues when people snatch up the loot, try to make off with more than their share and complain about the take.

So you will please forgive Miss Manners if she is no longer charmed by Halloween trick-or-treating. Since this has become a way of life, the only justification for making it a holiday would be to teach children to beg politely.

Dear Miss Manners: What would be the polite response to an older aunt who calls across the living room at a family gathering, including men and woman, to an adult woman, “You should wear a slip with that dress” in a loud, critical tone?

Gentle Reader: “This IS a slip, Aunt Bertha. I probably should have worn a dress with it.”