The Subconscious Trick-Or-Treating Faux Pas You Should Really Avoid

With every holiday, there comes a series of rules and etiquette that we must follow. Many of these rules are unspoken, a sort of "silent contract" that comes with the tradition. For example, you don't go to a birthday party and blow out the candles on the cake. It's simply not done.

You can apply these silent rules to the major holidays too, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and so on (save for Black Friday, which is widely agreed to follow the age-old rule of "every man for himself.") Blythe Copeland, of MarthaStewart.com, explains that the action of cutting the Thanksgiving turkey usually falls to the host, or if the host politely refuses, goes to the family's matriarch or patriarch should they be in attendance. On Christmas Day, the Maralee McKee School of Etiquette tells us that it's best to have kids unwrap all of their presents first before playing with any new toys, alongside reading any cards that should be attached to the present first. Again, none of these rules are set in stone or directly spoken, but they are practiced as per tradition or social courtesy. These rules may change, but they still remain present in some form or another.

But what about Halloween? What could you possibly do to mess up giving kids some candy? The answer lies in the fact that you, subconsciously or not, have been playing "favorites" among trick-or-treaters. 

Before we go farther, we'd like to ask you a question. When you were a little kid and you were trick-or-treating in a group, maybe with your baby cousin or sibling, did you ever find that the adults seemed to pay special attention to your cousin's or sibling's costume? Maybe the adults gave them an extra piece of candy or two for looking so adorable, leaving you and everyone else feeling kind of stiffed?

This is exactly the same faux pas to avoid. While you may think that you're being sweet giving the 4-year-old dressed up as a football player or a princess a few extra pieces of candy for looking so gosh-darn cute, you're not exactly being fair. If you're going to give one kid more candy, you ought to be prepared to give all the kids more candy (per The Daily Meal) — forget that it's a no-no to give out full-size Halloween candy. Perhaps, try using this formula to give out candy to trick-or-treaters.

Another Halloween faux pas pertains to costumes. It goes without saying that certain getups aren't going to be viewed as a joke by everyone. In a very recent example, New York Post reports that Twitter has campaigned for people to stop wearing costumes impersonating infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer — as if that needed to be said — after a recent Netflix series on the killer. "Please do not 'Cosplay' or dress up as Jeffrey Dahmer for Halloween. Stop idolizing a horrific human that committed atrocious crimes," wrote one person.