Bring Back Halloween!

Tomorrow afternoon, our city will celebrate Halloween -- that's right, on October 26. A lot of the towns around us celebrate Halloween on October 31, but not us.

Over the years, I have moved a number of times around the Chicago area, and wherever I move, All Hallows Eve is always celebrated on a day other than October 31st -- including the last time it fell on a weekend day -- Halloween was on Sunday, and trick or treating was the Sunday before.

This all started in 1982, after the Tylenol medicine scare in Chicago. It happened in late September to mid-October. Some scumbag tampered with bottles of Tylenol, lacing capsules with cyanide, and seven people died because of it. So, to make it safer for everyone, the local governments around Chicago decided that trick or treating should be held on the weekend, on a day other than Halloween -- to throw off people who wanted to give out tampered candy, I guess.

In fact, in 1982, trick or treating was cancelled, and our Halloween was spent at school, where we had bowls of candy around the gym to pick from, a costume contest and other Halloween-related activities. It was actually pretty fun, until I went to bob for apples, right behind a kid who left about a half gallon of dandruff in the drum.

After that year, we were allowed to trick or treat for three hours, usually on the Sunday before Halloween. I can see moving trick or treating for a few years after the Tylenol scare as a safety measure -- but it's now been 26 years since it happened, tampered candy has never been an issue, and most cities have moved trick or treating back to Halloween anyway.

Kids should be able to celebrate Halloween the way we used to as kids -- go out as long as they want, get stomach aches from eating too much candy, and pass out for 12 hours to recuperate. Ahhh, the good ol' days. Bring 'em back!

RoadRage