Halloween Parade Sparks More Towns To Move Trick-Or-Treat Date

The years-old debate -- trick-or-treating vs. the Halloween parade -- has returned. And for the towns closest to the Toms River Halloween Parade, the answer has been simple: move trick-or-treating.

Toms River officials, while saying they do not officially sanction trick-or-treating, moved the date to Oct. 30 last week. Now, several nearby towns have followed suit: Pine Beach, Ocean Gate, South Toms River and Beachwood all have agreed to hold their trick-or-treating on Friday, Oct. 30, to accommodate a request from Toms River Fire Company 1, the organizer of the parade.

Island Heights has not yet made a decision, according to borough personnel, but is expected to take up the issue at its council meeting Sept. 22.

For the towns that have adopted Oct. 30, curfews have not yet been set, except in Toms River, which set trick-or-treating from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Berkeley Township set its trick-or-treating for Halloween.

Carl Weingroff, the parade chairman, announced earlier this month that the parade -- billed as the second-largest Halloween parade in the world -- would return to being held on Halloween, a tradition that dates back to the 1930s. For most of the 76 times the parade has been held -- this year is 77th -- it had been held on Halloween regardless of which day of the week Oct. 31 fell, with the lone exception of Sundays. The fire company had an agreement with local churches that if Halloween fell on a Sunday, the parade would be held the day before, on Saturday.

Surrounding towns held their trick-or-treating on Oct. 30 so residents didn’t have to choose between trick-or-treating and participating in or watching the parade.

That changed in 2012, when the parade -- like so many other things -- was knocked out when Hurricane Sandy hit on Oct. 29. In 2013, the year after Sandy, parade organizers decided to try holding the parade on the Saturday before Halloween to draw more participants.

The result was that towns held their trick-or-treating on Oct. 31 for the first time in years, though there had long been a debate about it, especially as new residents who were not familiar with the history of the parade moved to the area.

But Weingroff said earlier this month that both the 2013 and 2014 parades saw a significant drop in both participation and spectators, so this year the decision was made to return to Halloween itself.