Oh, the ever popular question right now in New Orleans, “When is Halloween/trick-or-treating?”
PSA :: Halloween {and Therefore, Trick-Or-Treating) is October 31 in New Orleans
It’s a question I see come up from time to time; sometimes it’s because of a bad weather forecast, and sometimes it’s because Halloween falls on a – GASP! – school night. But no matter how many times you ask New Orleanians, the answer is that Halloween is Halloween, the 31st of October. I do know that sometimes there are regions or neighborhoods that will choose a particular night to trick or treat, so it’s not totally unheard of. But Halloween is Halloween. Halloween is October 31st. Always has been, always will be. We trick or treat on October 31st, be it a Sunday or Wednesday.
I love a routine. On a weeknight I look forward to getting the kids in bed, getting the house settled and in order, and having some quiet alone time to decompress. My kids can certainly get grumpy when they don’t get enough sleep, so we do try to stick to a schedule. I personally feel pretty strongly that on Sunday evenings it’s especially important for everyone to get to bed on time and start the week out on the right foot. All of that being said, why do I even entertain the thought of a Sunday night party/candy fest? Because it’s once a year and … it’s Halloween. October 31st, whether it’s a Tuesday or a Sunday, is Halloween. My kids need to learn that if you want to have fun and collect all the free candy your heart desires, well, you might get wet or be cold or very tired the next morning at school. That’s life. You take the good with the bad.
Sometimes it’s okay to bend the rules. We all deserve a little fun even if we know we might pay for it later. Life is full of choices, and one day they’ll be college students trying to decide if going to that big party the night before a test is worth it. Maybe, just maybe, all those years of school night trick or treating helped make it a more informed decision. We can hope, anyway.
Also, these aren’t just any kids we’re raising here in New Orleans. These are NOLA kids. They have no problem surviving on a diet of bagged chips and Popeyes for a week, skipping naps and staying up way past bedtime to catch a shoe on the Mardi Gras route on a school night. One night in late October is nothing for these kiddos; they’re pros at rallying.
I think a lot of us look back on our past with a nostalgia for how we grew up. Kids’ lives seem to be more scheduled and regulated now than ever before and to me, Halloween is a sweet callback to how “things used to be.” So my kids know that as the sun sets on the night of October 31st, no matter what day of the week it is, or what the weather is like outside, we’re dressing up and heading out because that’s the way it should be and that’s the way it’s always been.