When I was a kid, I used to love Halloween. It used to be one of my absolute favorite holidays, and I'll tell you why: For a week at least before the actual day, TV stations would play loads of classic '80s horror movies like Friday 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Jason, and so forth. We would all tell each other scary stories during camp-outs at night, and put on spectacular Halloween celebrations at school.
We would turn the stage in our elementary school cafeteria into a mini-haunted house, the "rooms" separated by curtains. Kids were invited to stick their hands into boxes with labels like "eyeballs" that were really just a bowl of peeled grapes, and "worms" that were really just pasta. Then you could partake in a Halloween costume judging contest if you thought your costume was original and creative. There was face-painting, cake-walking -- so many fun things! Then, on Halloween, we all got to wear our costumes to school if we wanted to. It was always more of a "free" day with more relaxed rules that we usually spent talking to each other about our costumes. Then that night, people around the entire neighborhood would decorate their houses and yards all up with props and music playing from their tape recorders (oh, '90s!). Sometimes people would use dry ice to simulate eerie fog. If a person had their porch light on, it meant they were celebrating and you were free to come knock. If their porch lights were off, it meant they weren't home or weren't participating, and someone would not be answering the door. I remember so well phrases like, "Ooh, that street has a lot of lights! Let's go down it!" And at the end of it all, you had a huge bowl of candy that lasted you for weeks!...but it's not like that any more.

Nowadays, hardly anyone decorates their houses. There doesn't seem to be as much effort put into costumery any more. Despite the past few years of carving several pumpkins and decorating my own house up a bit, I never seemed to attract many Trick-or-Treaters. People just don't seem to celebrate it much these days. Is it fear of strangers? Is it disinterest in the holiday? Is it lack of money to afford to decorate and dress up and buy candy? Is it that parents are too lazy or busy to indulge their kids in it as much? I've wondered, and I don't know, but I've been missing it for a while. So this year, I sadly decided I just wasn't going to bother celebrating.
I turned off the porch light to indicate that I was not celebrating and went about my evening until I got a ring at the doorbell. I answered it because I was actually expecting someone and couldn't see who was at the door. To my surprise, I found a father and his toddler (dressed as a ladybug) and myself with no candy! Then I remembered I did happen to have a few pieces of leftover chocolates and got them. After they left, I wondered how I was going to indicate I wasn't participating if having my porch light off didn't work. Then it hit me that perhaps I left the orange garage lights on! Bingo!
(a small side story here -- a friend of mine was moving out recently and was going to throw out some orange moodlight bulbs. As they were perfectly good light bulbs, they found their way into my garage last night at around 1:00 AM. It didn't cross our minds until much later that it was also very coincidentally Halloween! (An even smaller side story here -- they're very impressive lights! They turn everything that is green a dark, black-ish blue!)It had looked indeed like I was celebrating. I decided I would leave them on and turn the porch light back on until the rest of the very few pieces of candy I had left were gone. I was able to successfully finish passing out all candy I had this year! Haha!

I think I had 3 rings at my doorbell in total before I cut out all the lights. I wonder if I would have had more.
Another side story: a disgusting crab spider is in my garage right now, and he's only still living because of the spirit of Halloween! Hurrah!tl;dr: As an adult, I had a better Halloween on the year I decided not to celebrate it than all the other years when I really tried.