One of the reasons why Congress extended Daylight Savings Time doesn’t appear to have panned out in the Twin Cities. The extra week has allowed for longer daylight on Halloween, which arguably made trick-or-treating safer for the smaller children. Instead of darkness dropping at the time parents got home from work, they’d have an hour or so to take the kids around while drivers could still see them on the streets.
I’m manning the door this year, not in costume (unless mild-mannered blogger counts as a Halloween costume), and we didn’t get a single trick-or-treater until well after 6 pm and complete nightfall. We’ve seen a good number of small kids already, but also our share of teenagers. So far, we haven’t had childless adults showing up, which is supposed to be this year’s expression of arrested development.
Earlier today, the Little Admiral visited with Mommy and Daddy, and she’s dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She was supposed to be a cat this year, but she must have changed her mind. She even had the ruby-red slippers, which reminded me of Wicked all over again. I would have taken a picture but she bumped her head and bled from a cut, and by the time everything got cleaned up, she had to leave. I’m sure we’ll get a good picture from someone else tonight.
In the meantime, I’m trying to meter the candy out so that the last trick-or-treater gets the last bit of it. I hope you have a fun Halloween!
25 thoughts on “So Much For Daylight Savings Time”
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I’m glad you’re seeing action Captain….we have had a grand total of 7 kids….including the Junior Logician!
LL
Yeah, who wants to trick or treat in the daylight? Dumb government ninnies.
We’ve had way more than normal in Golden Valley
Our street was packed with Trick or Treaters, but not one of them appeared before the sun went down. All it really means is that the post Halloween sugar rush starts a little later, and the kids will be a little more tired at school tomorrow.
If shifting Trick or Treat to a daylight activity were really part of the goal, they are a bigger bunch of out-of-touch idiots than I thought.
Maybe next year we can have christmas in the summer so it wont be so cold.
Fewer kids than usual here in Georgia. It didn’t get dark here until after 6:30, we got the first ones at 6:45, then drips and drops every fifteen to twenty minutes… next to last at 8, last at 8:40.
It was a weeknight, and that probably had something to do with it, but it was kind of disappointing.
Cap’n: I would have taken a picture but she bumped her head
She certainly lives the role. 🙂
None at the place here near Seattle, but then it’s only 7:12 or so here. Pitch black out now (clouds filtered out the last of the sunlight earlier than usual). Clouds…in Seattle. Who’d a thunk it?
Love the family posts, love your site.
Best wishes to you and your family
We’ve had a half-dozen 20 somethings in no costume, with no bag. Saying trick or treat and holding out their hands.
I creeps me out. I gave all the candy to a group of 4 little girls, told them to have a nice night, and closed up.
We’re about 3 hours directly east of you near Wausau, WI.
It was weird following our daughters go around the neighborhood. My wife said that it reminded her of the trick-or-treat scene in “ET” – not Wisconsin.
Of course, last year I think it was something like 22 degrees and wet.
I love daylight savings time for Halloween.
Ten year old daughter was able to eat a healthy meal, do much of her homework and have a great time. Where she would have normally started at 6:00 she started an hour later: full of good food rather than candy and not stressing about her homework.
It got dark here after 7:00, which is just about right.
Great Halloween here in St.Louis!
My two little indians made out like bandits. Of course they gave daddy all the candy they don’t like…..They wouldn’t give up the “fun-size” Snickers though. Oh well,at least they didn’t get any popcorn balls!
Happy Halloween America!
Thx LT
Interesting. I had always assumed the opposite: That Congress had never previously extended DST past Haloween so that it didn’t get dark enough to trick-or-treat too late.
It seemed to me that I got about the same number this year as last.
Last year, we had ZERO trick or treaters. This year the bell started ringing around 4, so i ran out and bought some treats, got back, and still had 6 different groups come by before the end of sanctioned hours once i got back, flipped on the porch light, and jumped into an improvised halloween costume. In the past 5 years, i could count the number of trick or treaters that i did not know the parents of on one finger. I declared halloween dead last year, and didn’t even do a jack o lantern this year. Not sure if its related to that extra hour of light, or lack of a promotion to take your apples and candy to the local hospital to xray for razor blades and adulterants. And other than some protests on the local news over a new “wiccan” bookstore a few hours south, not much anti-pagan hate speech either. Brooms don’t produce greenhouse gases, i guess, and are now tolerated.
Cool thing though, i got my halloween candy for 25% off buying at the last minute. Bad news, i have half a bag of milky ways left over screaming “eat me.”
not in costume (unless mild-mannered blogger counts as a Halloween costume)
I guess you were in costume.
We ran out early of things to give out… given the high price of beer and cigarettes. (Just kidding, of course).
An increase here in trick or treaters this year too. The neighborhood where I grew up (a golf course community) arranged a Halloween hayride last weekend to make things safer. In past years there had been an increase of the worst parts of town being practically bussed in and the actual residents’ kids being threatened for candy. That was soon handled by off-duty and on-duty police. The hayride last Saturday seems to be no less popular with the kids even if actual Halloween day is then limited to small parties and gatherings. That is probably how it will remain for future Halloweens.
We had a ton of trick or treaters this year. (A trend that’s been steadily increasing over the last couple of years, after 2004 when we had, I think… two.) Went through two large bowls of candy, and the little bastards took all of my Reeses Cups, which I generally hope are left over for me to filtch for the next few days.
As for timing, same here. Not one until it was nearly full dark. I can’t blame them. Who wants to go trick or treating in the daylight? How spooky is that supposed to be? Before I went to bed there was already news of an assault by some idiot in a halloween mask though. Sad.
In the Dallas area, the kids waited until dark to come and then were still coming, later than usual, when we ran out of candy at about 8:40pm. As usual, we had the groups of Hispanic people from outside the neighborhood. I have thought that they would feel safer and get more in our diverse, but middle class subdivision.
Who cares what rationale they used to give working people the chance to get home while it’s still light out for five frakking months of the year.
An extra hour of daylight at o’dark-thirty in the morning is utterly useless to the 90% of the population that only stumbles around half-dressed with a cup of coffee in their hand during that time.
An extra hour of daylight after work would be a godsend. So far as I’m concerned, the sun should come up at 10:00 in the morning and I should have three hours of light at the end of the day.
We had 949 trick-or-treaters in Allen Park, MI. Didn’t think much about the daylight, but most of them came before it got completely dark. A fun night for everyone, I thought.
A rather unusual occurrence in my neck o’ the woods. At around 5:30 PM (with considerable daylight remaining), we had our first trick or treaters, a young couple with a 3 year old in tow. As I had taken this year’s candy purchasing procrastination well beyond the margin of safety, I was compelled (for the first time in my memory) to ignore the doorbell and cower sheepishly by an upstairs window as the disappointed trio departed for more productive front doors.
When the coast was clear, I made a dash to my perennially dependable Halloween candy merchant and was astounded to see NOTHING left but 12 sleeves of Reese’s PB cups and a copious amount of thoroughly undistributable loose candy. I immediately scarfed up those 12 thereby CLEARING the shelves, surely a first in my memory.
No trick-or-treaters until after nightfall, and fewer than last year because they still had to go to bed early, leaving less time for trick-or-treating. And the kids now get up early in the morning to wait for the bus while it is still pitch-black outside!
Daylight or no, out here trick-or-treating doesn’t start until Mom and/or Dad come home. And that’s about 5:30-6:00 p.m. By the time the kids are fed, it’s usually about 7:00 p.m. And even though my neighborhood is relatively safe, generally a parent or an older sibling takes the kids.
However, last night my two youngest (both in High School) went to friends’ houses to eat/party/trick-or-treat. So Hubs and I went out to dinner! DD#1 was home, but no one came by. I think it’s because we live on the top of a hill. 🙂
I deliver Meals-on-wheels on Mondays and last Monday there was an elderly woman who was not going to open the door for me…said it was way too early. I told her we were not early and she looked at her watch and told me it was 10:20 and to come back when it was time. Seems she had changed her watch last weekend. Oh well, she got her meal then and there!
And then last night we were invited out to dinner…turkey, dressing the whole bit…but our hostess had to keep excusing herself to answer the doorbell of the trick or treaters. All of a sudden we heard a lot of “oh, dears” and “oh, mys” and she came back to the table in shock. Seems that a little black cat had tried to sneak through the door while she had it open and she didn’t noticed and tried to shut the door with the poor cats head caught in it…I mean really tried!! When she saw what had happened she opened the door and that poor kitty cat ran away apparently unharmed but our hostess was beside herself. Other than that just another uneventful Halloween…can hardly wait for next year’s main event.
“…another uneventful Halloween…can hardly wait for next year’s main event.”
What really gives me the creeps is the thought that Halloween ’08 will be over and done with before this insufferable presidential campaign.