Oct 8, 2013 3 min read

Halloween is still a little more than three weeks away, but municipalities are beginning to send in their trick-or-treat hours.

I have no problem with that; better to send them in earlier than later. But during that last several years, I noticed the time kids would be going door to door became shorter and shorter, and earlier and earlier. I would guess the average time kids are out collecting candy is about two hours and the average starting time is around 6 p.m.

Most likely, it is all about safety, and rightly so. Most youngsters are accompanied by a parent as they trek through neighborhoods, and when the last munchkin appears at a door, bag open, waiting for the last Reeses Cup to be dropped in, darkness has fallen.

There are some townships and boroughs in Washington and Greene counties that have abandoned door-to-door trick-or-treating altogether. Instead, they have chosen to have parties in social halls or community centers. And I find nothing wrong with that.

But I do wish everyone would celebrate Halloween on Halloween, which is Oct. 31, not Oct. 28, Oct. 29 or Oct. 30. That’s just me, though.

And speaking of me, I remember as a kid coming home from school, putting on whatever costume my parents had bought and then descending on my neighbors with a bag large enough to hold candy to last a lifetime.

I don’t recall there every being a deadline when trick-or-treat was over. Most of us came home when a knock on a door was met with, “Sorry, all out of candy,” or on a rare occasion, some older kids would say, “Hey, you in the clown suit, give me your bag.”

Nothing like spending three or four hours walking miles and coming home with nothing but tear trails winding through clown makeup. But I wouldn’t know anything about that.

What I do know, though, is that on the occasions when we all made it home unscathed, we dumped out our candy onto the floor and marveled at how much we had accumulated.

Back then, there were no such things as mini-candy bars. We had the big Snickers, the big Milky Ways, the big Hershey bars and sometimes we had candy apples, which no one really wanted. And don’t ever remember taking my candy to the hospital to have it X-rayed for hidden foreign objects.

Halloween is supposed to be a fun time for children, and whether it means going door to door, or gathering in a hall or wherever, it is important kids come away from the experience with fond memories, and it is equally important motorists remember there are little ghosts and goblins walking the streets on All Hallows Eve.