I believe your editorial endorsing Halloween on the last Sunday of October was well-intentioned but misguided.
Your rosy picture of trick-or-treating on a Sunday afternoon is nothing like the experience we had last year in our neighborhood when Halloween was on a Sunday.
Children started ringing our doorbell at noon and kept it up until 9 p.m. I gave away more than 200 pieces of candy before I ran out–about 50 percent more than I gave away the prior year, when Halloween was on Saturday, and about twice as much as the several years before when Halloween was on a weekday.
Children were arriving in SUVs and minivans as parents drove groups of children from neighborhood to neighborhood. By the end of the evening I had parents coming to my door for candy, explaining that the children were too tired or too bored to come up to the door themselves.
I have always enjoyed Halloween. It’s like a block party, with parents chatting with neighbors as they take the children from door to door.
But last year, for the first time I can remember, Halloween was an irritating, and slightly scary, experience. And I believe it is because it was on Sunday, when what normally is an occupation for an hour or so was turned into an all-day extravaganza.
If you have data, as opposed to anecdote, that supports your position that Sunday trick-or-treating is safer, I certainly would have liked to have seen it in your editorial. My anecdotal experience is that weekday trick-or-treating is safer. The hours are more contained, children stay closer to home and parents are more likely to be supervising their children.
