Should The Date Of Halloween Be Changed?

Let's face it, Halloween has morphed into such a huge commercialized thing now, are we really surprised there's a movement to get the date changed?

Last week, website Change.org created a petition, and even addressed it to President Trump, asking that the date of Halloween be changed from the traditional October 31st date, to the last Saturday of October. They call it the "Saturday Halloween Movement" and say the reason they'd like to see the date changed is to help prevent the "3,800 Halloween-related injuries each year."  They go on to explain, in a handful of statistics, that in a nut-shell parents suck at teaching their kids about Halloween Safety and fail to protect their kids adequately during their trick-or-treat outings.

Beyond that (and don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping kids safe!) a couple of things caught my attention. The very last "fact" the website points to is, and I quote "51% Of Millennials say Halloween is their favorite holiday, why cram it into 2 rushed evening weekday hours when it deserves a full day!?!" Does it really deserve a full day?

Then, just this week, in response to this petition (which as of the writing of this post, was up to almost 120 thousand people) two major candy brands came out on Twitter in support of the Saturday Halloween Movement. Skittles retweeted the post. And not to be outdone, Snickers tweeted that "If the Fed Govt makes it official, we’ll offer 1 million free SNICKERS to America. Join the petition!"

Hmmmm. They're going to give the country a candy bar, if they country can get the Feds to change a date? Not sure they realize the Feds didn't create Halloween. The Celts actually did that about two thousand years ago, as a festival to help ward off the dead. It's only been recently that advertisers and the entertainment industry has spun it into a celebration of self-inflicted diabetes and who can where the sluttiest costume. The Federal Government didn't determine the date, so how can it change the date without some blow-back?

Call me skeptical, but this mom (who loves Halloween, by the way, and can totally understand the idea of celebrating it on a weekend, if for no other reason than convenience sake) gets the feeling that this is all a marketing ploy for businesses to be able to capitalize on this holiday, and for people to go out and get trashed and not have to work the next day. Again, not that I'm against businesses making money or people having fun, but who's to say that if they get their way with this one, they won't try to move holidays like Valentine's Day and St. Paddy's day next?

Kind of feels really strange to me. But I am but one of many. What do you think? Should the date of Halloween be changed?