I grew up on a small circular street with 7 houses on it, 4 of which had kids... Our parents would just get us together in a group and we'd make the rounds of all 7 houses (including our own) and that was that. I never experienced anything larger until I was in middle school and a friend invited me to go with them. Blew my mind that you could just... walk up to random houses and they'd give you candy. I thought everyone was just doing the same small-scale thing I was getting.