It’s the same story almost every year: parents rushing out of work early to get back home so they can take their kids trick-or-treating on a weeknight. It’s late and it’s getting stressful. You’re stuck in traffic and the few minutes of daylight are shrinking.
Uh-oh, it started to rain. Do we cancel the door-to-door visits?
There’s an easy way to relieve the stress: simply designate the last Sunday of October as trick-or-treat day.
Parents can be with their kids rather than dropping them off with Grandma and Grandpa to make the rounds with them. No rushing home from work. No more battling daylight. No more having the kids get home at 6:30 to start gobbling wads of sugar and having them bounce off the walls right before bed.
Moving the Halloween festivities to a Sunday will make it more of a family affair and enhance safety for all involved.
To make this work, we would need our elected officials to pass advisory legislation that officially designates Sunday the day for trick-or-treating. It, of course, could never be a mandate. And there would be glitches in the first few years where some would go on the Sunday and some would continue to go on the 31st. But we believe that, after a few years, it will be ingrained that Sunday is the way to go.
Is there a legislator out there who will take on the cause?