Halloween

Friday and Saturday Halloweens are the best ones, since for kids there's no school the next day and the holiday can be truly savored. Parents are also a lot more likely to take their kids out trick-or-treating. Anything that encourages the time-honored practice of going door to door for candyis good in my book; in our neck of the woods there is very little trick-or-treating.

I've talked about the mechanics of trick-or-treating in past Halloween posts, but now let's turn to the other side of the door - the people giving out the candy. Our family lived in a pretty average American suburb - the guy living down the street might be a police officer, or a retiree, or an electrician - so there was a huge variety of strategies for dispensing the sweet stuff.

For instance, there was a family that had its own popcorn machine that they parked in their driveway - dispensing stapled bags of fresh, buttered popcorn to kids and parents. A lot of homeowners preferred to spend the evening on lawn chairs in front of their garages, passing out candy right from there and having a chat with people as they went by. Other houses went all out in trying to spook kids - fake cobwebs, stuffed animatronic scarecrows, etc.

My family is pretty conventional - just run up to the door and pass out candy to trick-or-treaters as they ring the bell. Obviously it's best to do this in costume, but kids don't seem to care either way as long as the candy is decent. Finally, I think it's prudent to have some exterior indication that you're celebrating Halloween - a jack-o-lantern, a "Happy Halloween" door hanger, something - otherwise kids will avoid you. And no one wants that.