Halloween falls on October 31, making every year a mystery as to what day of the week our spooky holiday will fall on. Unfortunately for the class of 2020, Halloween fell on a school night every single year, of this class’s entire high school career. Making it hard for students to fully enjoy the holiday. Something I feel needs to be changed. 

Halloween is considered one of the major holidays in this country. Unlike Christmas and Thanksgiving however, there are no vacation days to go along with the holiday. Meaning that whatever day the 31 of October, Halloween is happening, there is a 57% chance that it will fall on a school night.

To end the pain children all across the country have to deal with by going to school the day after Halloween, I propose to make Halloween the last Friday of October every year. This change may seem preposterous, but having Halloween on a date rather than the 31 does not seem like a detrimental factor that will influence the heart of the holiday. 

Historically, Halloween is only on the 31 because the Celtic festival of Samhain was held on that day, when people would dress up and light bonfires to ward off ghosts. A tradition that has been so modified that I don’t see any reason we can’t move the date of Halloween. 

Halloween is almost always held in the afternoon and goes until around 9 p.m. at the latest. For younger kids this works well; on the other hand high schoolers tend to stay up later and hang out with friends after the event.

“I do prefer staying up late [On Halloween]; I usually go out somewhere with my friends,” said Alex Lee ‘20. Staying up late on a holiday will happen; there is no stopping it. However on a school night, students could face larger issues like fatigue in school, or missed assignments. “It makes me really worry about the next day at school, making sure I get enough sleep to wake up in the morning and making sure I get all my homework done for the next day.” Said Lee

Another senior at HB, Jason MclWrath ‘20, explained that having Hallowen on a school night “just kinda sucks, you get a ton of candy, you pig out and then you feel horrible the next day.”

A parent also advocated for the holiday to be hosted over the weekend because of their kids lack of focus on school. “All day he is thinking about his costume, and it’s distracting, so if they do it on a weekend when they can get dressed and excited but not have to worry about school the next day. That would be better,” said parent Mike Elliot. 

However, if Hallween was on a Friday every year, this would let kids finish out the week of school and have time to go trick or treating and hang out with friends, without fear of the repercussions of going to school the next day. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard not to see controversy over the change. “It depends how you see negative, there will definitely be a lot more parties,” explained MclWrath.

While Elliot also felt having Halloween on a weekend would be nice, he stayed true to the holidays roots. “Halloween has to be on the 31 everybody knows that.” 

In the grand scheme of things, Halloween will always be a part of our culture, no matter the date or the day of the week it is on. But I feel trick-or-treaters and celebrators of the holiday have earned a day off after the hard labor of setting out decorations and handing out candy throughout the day. While kids waste their energy sprinting from house to house and fall asleep with stomach-aches from all they candy they eat, to high schoolers who are losing more sleep and productivity by hanging out with friends during the holiday, a day off would help from this post Halloween fatigue 

Having Halloween annually on the last Friday of October would give everyone a break, and though parties post a threat, they could happen over any weekend of the year. So, if anything, the buzz around Halloween will “scare” kids into hanging with their close friends during the holiday.