The end of October is here, and for many that means it is time for Halloween. This year has seemed to move along quickly, for me at least, and it is hard to believe that Halloween is already upon us, leaving just two months before the calendar will flip to 2026.
On Friday evening doorbells will ring and costumed children will be collecting candy, as their parents stand guard on the sidewalk chatting with other parents, and likely looking forward to warming up with a cup of tea (or something stronger) when they return home.
We all remember our Halloween experiences from our own childhoods; it was a time for make-believe, a time for dressing up as our favourite characters or creatures, a time for creativity.
While I have some fond Halloween memories from my childhood, it is something that I grew out of and away from by the time I was 12. I briefly had my attention to Halloween return for a few years when my sons were young and enjoyed getting dressed up to go trick-or-treating, but today, aside from the fun of seeing kids dressed up in costumes for a day, I am not overly interested in Halloween – you won’t catch me at a Halloween party for example. Some of my closest friends in my adulthood have been big fans of Halloween, eagerly anticipating each year the opportunity to create a costume and attend a party. I have always admired their enthusiasm even if I don’t exactly understand it.
The last three years that I participated in the Halloween festivities, I dressed as members of the band KISS, a popular costume for a young boy in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and it was a simple costume to pull together, requiring just some white and black face paint. Once I became a teenager, I considered myself too cool for Halloween; that was kid’s stuff after all.
In the 1970s we often used old pillow cases for our trick or treat bags, though the sturdy plastic bags from the grocery store were always useful if mom didn’t want you taking a pillow case from the linen closet.
Whether the weather would cooperate with Halloween was always uncertain. Some years Halloween was almost balmy, while other years we were wearing snowsuits under our costumes, and flakes of snow fell for the duration of our candy-gathering outing.
We didn’t think much about safety generally when I was a kid, and Halloween was no exception, though many parents in the ’70s and ’80s were obsessed with the possibility that the candy we collected could have been tampered with using things like pins or razor blades, a Boomer generation urban myth that, while there is no instance of it actually occurring that people can point to, we Gen Xers had our candy inspected closely by our parents once we returned home.
Today we put a much greater focus on safety in most every aspect of our lives, and that includes fun events like Halloween. Costumes are designed with safety in mind, and often we will see children with little lights attached to them making them more visible on a dark Halloween evening. The government of Canada even has a full page on their website dedicated to Halloween safety (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/home-safety/halloween-safety.html).
Another aspect of safety to consider is ensuring that the doors your kids knock on are safe. We used to tell my kids that if there are no lights on inside or out, skip the house as they likely don’t want to hear yet another doorbell. We would also subtly ensure that our kids avoided knocking on the doors of the neighbourhood curmudgeon or anyone that we knew might not be entirely safe.
During the pandemic period a major concern was to reduce or eliminate contact with others, and here in Meaford a local couple created the Haunted Candy Route Map which allowed families to get out on Halloween knowing where to find homes that were providing contact-free access to their Halloween candy.
As it turned out, the candy route map was a hit, so much so that despite the pandemic having now been over for more than two years, the route map continues on. This year, as they did last year, organizers Anna and Rick den Hengst have put a call out for accessible homes without barriers that can spoil the fun for a youngster on Halloween. As of Monday, 26 Meaford homes had been included on this year’s map, including six that are wheelchair accessible.
There weren’t many silver linings to be found during the roughly three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Meaford Haunted Candy Map was certainly one of them.
You can request a finished copy of the map by emailing halloweenhauntedcandyroute@gmail.com, or keep an eye on the various Meaford Facebook community pages where the map will be posted.
Halloween is an exciting time for youngsters (and the young at heart), and it is important to keep those youngsters safe. Parents should ensure that their children can be visible to motorists in spite of their fun costumes, and those out on the roads on Halloween evening must be watchful and cautious. And while the razor blades in Halloween candy is little more than an urban myth, parents are well advised to inspect that candy before the kids dig in and build that sugar rush.
Happy Halloween everyone. Have fun, be safe, and brush those teeth an extra time or two in the days that follow the big event.
