Halloween used to be the night children knocked on strangers' doors and received candy. This year, the remarkable act of generosity may be the stranger answering at all.

Queen City News reports that shoppers are wrestling with more expensive candy and smaller packages. Its report, updated today, cites government data showing candy prices have risen 44 percent over five years. One shopper described spending about 20 minutes working out how to stay under a $30 budget while buying something children would actually want.

Twenty minutes. For candy. Somewhere, a retirement calculator is wondering why it is not getting this level of attention.

The miniature chocolate bar has always been an ambitious product. Calling it fun size was already asking a lot of the adjective. At these prices, the industry may need to move on to terms like collectible or appointment only.

Picture the upgraded trick-or-treat experience. A homeowner in white gloves lifts one wrapped sweet from a velvet cushion. The child is invited to examine it under flattering lighting. Nobody asks what it costs. That would spoil the atmosphere of the driveway showroom.

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The joke is the ritual, not the shopper trying to protect thirty bucks. Families are doing actual arithmetic to maintain a small, cheerful tradition. The household budget does not have a special trapdoor marked seasonal whimsy through which extra money appears whenever a manufacturer prints a pumpkin on the bag.

And a bag full of individually tiny things creates a useful accounting problem. The price can go up. The package can get smaller. The adult standing under fluorescent lights has to calculate both while a cartoon vampire assures them this is a party.

There is something wonderfully American about teaching children the importance of community by having every house independently negotiate the wholesale terms of being nice.

Perhaps we should hand out something genuinely terrifying instead: the receipt. Children can hold it under their chins with a flashlight while an older kid whispers that the bag used to be bigger.

Keep the candy if you can. Keep the porch light on if you want. But nobody needs to feel guilty for declining to finance a neighborhood merger between Halloween and a luxury-goods counter.

The skeleton on the lawn is not a warning. It is the household budget after the seasonal aisle.

Source: Queen City News, updated October 25. The candy showroom and receipt ritual are fictional satirical scenes.