When I was a kid, Halloween didn’t end at 8 or 9 o’clock, as it does in so many towns today. It went on until 10 or 11, and rather than making their houses look dark and deserted, most folks in my neighborhood kept the porch lights on and kept answering their doorbells until all the candy was gone.
But we live in a different world, and having so many kids out on the streets after dark — even when they’re accompanied by parents or other chaperones — just isn’t a great idea. That’s why we’ve seen the proliferation of community-sponsored trick-or-treating at shopping malls and parks, sometimes even on a day other than October 31.
I have a couple of friends who have made their own Halloween tradition. They don’t have kids, so each year, they open a bottle of wine and enjoy sips in between rings of the doorbell. One year they even played Scrabble, but getting that game finished proved to be problematic… so they’ve stuck to wine ever since.
Their theory: Why should kids have all the fun?
Hey, it makes sense to me… and I already have the bottle that we’re going to open this evening picked out.
Yes, it’s red — blood red, you might say. And we have great hopes that it will be scary good.
