Halloween Traditions- A Shot of Rum for the Parents?

   

 The town that I live in does trick-or-treating for the kids the Sunday before or of Halloween, each year. Part of the reason is for safety since it's been getting darker, sooner and the other reason is so it's scheduled the same time every year.

      Unfortunately, that means that if the day of Halloween is in the middle or end of the week, it seems we are way ahead of all of the other families that I know and it's also kind of a let down for the rest of the month and it might as well just be November.

   




Halloween is my holiday. I don't go out and worship the devil or anything like that, but I LOVE to dress up. Growing up, I always wanted to be an actress and even acted a little in college for a drama group called Omega, so I really like to dress up and get into character. This year I was a vampire, the year before that, I was a granny.

      So, I love to go trick-or-treating with my kids and they enjoy having a crazy mommy taking them next door... soon, that will change. They'll be too embarrassed and ask me to stop, but until that time, I'm gonna dress up. 

      This year, we experienced something that never happened before. We had gone to a few houses on blocks that we hadn't been to before and it was really quite a let down. Houses had porch lights on, but they weren't opening their doors for us.  (For us, or at least when I was younger and growing up in a different town, a light on meant you had candy. It seems like if you have candy here, you're going to leave your door open or hang around outside.)

      After deciding to head back onto the road that we know does hand out some treats, my kids did their normal thing: "Trick-or-treat! Thank you!" but then we heard a twist. "Hey mom and grandma! They have a treat for you too!"

     I was like, "Oh really? Well thank you!" I headed up the stairs expecting a Snickers or something, but the guy gestures to some drinks with little shot glasses. He was offering us some pumpkin spice rum and vodka or something like that. I was so surprised. I thanked him and turned him down politely because, well, who hands our alcohol to parents?

     Apparently, this is something that people in Arizona do for parents and its not just a random person, it's like almost all of the houses. My bro-in-law who lives there was telling us all about it. 

     So this is an entirely new concept, something I had never heard of, but it makes sense that different places do different things for holidays. 

What traditions do you do? Are there a little rituals that you do differently? My husband's grandpa told me about what Halloween was like for him as a kid. Back then, they trick-or-treated the whole week of Halloween and if they didn't get treats, they really did do tricks. Apparently, the people of Arizona hand out alcohol. If someone could hand out cheesecakes and puppies, I might just move there.