Should Halloween Be Moved to a Different Day?

It's tradition: on the 31st of October every year, we take carte blanche to dress ourselves (and our children) in ridiculously cute looking costumes and parade around our neighborhoods, going from door to door with pillowcases and smiles and saying "Trick-or-Treat" in exchange for some ghoulish goodies. It's Halloween, and it's how its been done forever, from the time that we were kids to, well, the time (now) that we have kids of our own.

But it may not stay that way forever.

A recent iVillage article examines the state of Connecticut and its lawmakers, specifically State Representative Tim Larson, who is seeking to have the holiday of Halloween legally changed from October 31 to the last Saturday of October.

His reasons? Larson champions the idea that having Halloween on a Saturday each year would boost the economy and add some extra safety to the holiday. He also reasons that it will make the holiday less manic for working parents, who often have to rush to and from work or to different Halloween-oriented events each year.

Yes, Halloween might be a hectic time. But is it really necessary to tamper with tradition?

How would we have felt if Halloween wasn't on October 31 each year? Wasn't Halloween what October was all about? It was what made heading into November and preparing for Thanksgiving special. Or so I thought.

I mean, think of it this way; we know that most holidays (Halloween included) are cut-out to be nothing more than money-makers and economy-drivers. Yes, Christmas is special, too, but it's real importance to the nation is the fact that we spend money around this time of year. If we move Halloween, it's like we acknowledge that the holidays are really nothing more than that. They're not special because of tradition, or anything like that. Rather, they're special because they make money. And that, in this writer's opinion, is just not right.

Sure, it might be easier for us to change the day of Halloween so it wasn't on October 31, a day that can be very random most years. But we all (no matter what age) know this to be true; in parenting, there's no easy way out. And Halloween (and trying to change it) is no exception to this.