SHIFTING SCARES
While many area cities still plan to celebrate on Halloween, Edmond moves activities to night before
Neighborhoods in Edmond are preparing for an early haunting this year as trick-or-treaters will hit the streets the day before the Halloween holiday.
The move to Saturday, Oct. 30, is a change to the trick-or-treating schedule the city has made in previous years when the holiday falls on a Sunday, as it will this year.
However, the altered date is also a nod to the many considerations communities face when planning the holiday candy hunt.
“This is something that we do whenever the 31st falls on a Sunday. It’s really just a matter of it being on a Saturday, giving families the opportunity to do this on a night that kids don’t have school the next day,” said Bill Begley, marketing and public relations manager for the city of Edmond.
“It also gives our businesses and organizations downtown an opportunity to participate that they wouldn’t have on Sundays,” Begley said.
In Oklahoma City, Moore, Enid, Norman and many other cities and towns across Oklahoma, ghouls, princesses and pirates will still hit the streets on the 31st, keeping the tradition of scares bumping in the night on the actual holiday.
Lawton is expecting trick-or-treaters on Saturday, like Edmond, but in both cities and in many others, there are no strict rules on when you can and cannot visit the neighbors.
Instead, the emphasis is on being
safe while having fun. For now, individual communities and neighborhoods have the final say of when and for how long freaks, geeks and greasers can roam the streets in search of full-size candy bars.
“Really, honestly, there’s no official start or finish time. If neighborhoods want to observe trick-or-treat on Sunday or Friday, that’s up to them,” Begley said. “There’s no official restrictions, but from the city, we do encourage kids and adults both to try to do trick-ortreating in the late afternoon and early evening hours just so there’s enough light to be safe.”
Growing concern
From public safety and school schedules to the question of celebrating this holiday on the Sabbath, the conversation on Halloween’s tradition of giving something good to eat, and when is best to do it, has picked up in the last couple of years.
A petition started in 2018 by the Halloween and Costume Association called for a holiday called “National Trick or Treat Day” to be permanently set for the last Saturday in October, in hopes of allowing more time for parents to celebrate with their kids and to respond to safety concerns surrounding the holiday.
While this is not the first time a group has advocated for a uniform date (the Farmers’ Almanac floated the idea of a permanent Saturday celebration in 1999), there also is an increased emphasis to make a change based on accident data.
Halloween is marked as the third most deadly holiday based on pedestrian and automobile accident data presented in 2021 by AutoInsurance.org.
According to the website, when Halloween is celebrated during weeknights there is an 83% increase in fatal accidents involving children after 4 p.m., which translates to about eight more deadly accidents than on average weeknights.
When the holiday is celebrated on a Friday, according to data going back to 1994, fatal accident numbers increase by 36%, which equates to at least 21 more fatal accidents than on an average Friday.