A crisis for Halloween

The Halloween of today probably isn't what you remember it being. They say that nostalgia often enhances the virtues and clouds the flaws of your memories, so I am trying to be realistic about how much of what I remember of the holiday is true and how much is wishful thinking.

But the way I remember it, it was an affair that lasted from when the daylight was fading (5ish) to when you could no longer convince people to give you candy (for me, usually about 10 - 11). The streets were usually packed with kids and most houses gave out candy. It wasn't always great candy, although there were those mythologized houses which gave out the full-sized Snickers, which were worth revisiting four or five times with different masks. My parents remember getting a lot of trick-or-treaters when I was a kid, and the number slowly declined as I got older.

Some areas of the country even have a bastardized version of Halloween, usually called Beggars' Night. They "celebrated" this in the small Wisconsin town in which I lived for two years. It took place on a Sunday (regardless of when Halloween actually was) . . . in BROAD DAYLIGHT! It was difficult enough for me to make my elaborately decorated house look cool in daylight. But it must have sucked to be a kid. No wonder the my friends' kids were all totally disenchanted with the concept of Halloween by ages 8 or 9 - it was pretty lame. All the sneakiness, the danger, the spookiness had been sucked dry. Removing the celebration from Oct. 31st (and renaming it) was also a subtle, quasi-religious attempt to distance the holiday from its roots - to "de-evil" it, if you will. My town wasn't the only one - Des Moines has apparently been doing this since the 1930's.

This is why I feel pretty strongly about a topic that most adults don't give a second thought to - a supposed "children's" holiday. But some of my fondest memories are of Halloween. I expressed more creativity and cunning in service of that holiday than all the other holidays put together. If some people feel compelled to fight when they feel Christmas is being encroached upon, why not do the same for a holiday that matters most to us?

What are your fondest memories of Halloween? What's it like where you live - still a good time or a shadow of its former self? Do you have to deal with Beggars' Night or something equally lame?