I love Halloween. I love to dress up. I love to make costumes, drip blood, zombify kids, and love to have great conversations out on the streets on Halloween night with people I haven’t seen in a while.

I see the upside of Halloween as being the fun, the social, the treats, the fantasy, the fireworks (my dog would disagree about the fireworks). The downsides are the consumption of disposable goods and plastics for costumes, the purchase of large amounts of candy and chocolate produced with the efforts of child labour and slave labour (Nestle, Mars, Kraft, and the list goes on), the hangover at school the next day.

Halloween at school is fun for most – dances, parties, themed units are but some of the highlights. The day after – not so fun. Not fun for caregivers, teachers, bus drivers or kids.

I’m sure others have had this thought but I’m going to put it out there – let’s change Halloween to the last Friday in October. Nevermind the 31^st thing. Friday gives us the advantage of having a dance at school, of making sure trick or treating doesn’t start too early and of taking the rush out of things.

What if we continue to get donations for high traffic areas and advertise that trick or treating runs from 5:30 to 7:30, or 6 – 8?  Then go home to defrost and take your time taking off make up, showering and letting the buzz wear off. Cozy up in front of the fire or under a blanket rather than try to jam a bouncing, energized child with a freshly scrubbed face into bed while you drag yourself off to clean up, make lunches and get to sleep so you can work the next day.

Sure, this idea has downsides like an increase in parties and drunkenness, later fireworks, general rowdiness, not everyone works Monday to Friday and other things I haven’t thought of.  I still think it’s an idea worth considering for teachers, trick or treaters, treat distributors and caregivers.