By Staff
It is Halloween, meaning children — and some adults — will be out doing the trick-or-treat rituals tonight.
Hopefully, there will be more treats than tricks delivered and safety will join candy as items on children’s minds tonight. To help make Halloween safer, Washington’s First Baptist Church is conducting its annual Trunk or Treat event. The church, located at the intersection of East Main and Harvey streets, recruits some of its members to decorate their vehicles and distribute candy and other Halloween goodies from the trunks or rear areas of those vehicles.
By conducting Trunk or Treat in one of its parking lots, the church provides a safe place for children to pick up treats. It beats walking along streets and crossing streets to acquire candy bars, suckers, jawbreakers and popcorn balls. Trunk or Treat begins at 5:30 p.m.
A safe environment for that trick-or-treat ritual is a wonderful treat the church is providing for area children.
Over the years in the area, Halloween has become much more than a candy-collecting activity for children. Other activities, many for teenagers and adults have come along to give the “older” crowd something to do other than hand out candy on Halloween.
For example, take Washington Haunts, which is a ghost walk through downtown Washington. No, ghosts are not walking in downtown Washington, as far as we know. Area residents and visitors walk through some spooky and ghostly areas during Washington Haunts, another safe alternative when it comes to celebrating Halloween.
The one-hour ghosts walks take place Friday and Saturday. With proceeds from the ghost walks going to Downtown Washington on the Waterfront, participants will be making an investment in the future of downtown Washington, home of most of the city’s major festivals and events such as Smoke on the Water, Music in the Streets, Summer Festival, Saturday Market, the Christmas Flotilla, Pickin’ on the Pamlico and the Fourth of July celebration.
Activities such as Trunk or Treat or Washington Haunts offer safe alternatives to the trick-or-treat ritual, but a great number of children will go from door to door in search of those sweet goodies.
Here are some safety tips for children:
Here is a tip for adults. Someone, somewhere did something bad to a child’s Halloween candy a long time ago, and it’s spoiled a little bit of the fun for parents ever since. While the odds of finding something dangerous in your child’s bag are pretty small, it’s still best to inspect treats before children consume them.