Look, if you celebrate Halloween, then you certainly don’t need me to get the jump on it for you. Our major retailers took care of that shortly after the Fourth of July.

I figure you know how to choose costumes and carve pumpkins and complain mightily about the high price of candy these days. (Is candy manufactured from petroleum products? The high price of gas is the only reasonable explanation for why sweet tarts and other formerly cheap “kiddie candy” now require a second mortgage to procure).

No, you need my help after all the heavy lifting is done. The real fun of Halloween, and trick-or-treat in particular, is dividing and discussing the loot after the fact.

Candy. There are many opinions on the best possible handling of Halloween candy.

The amateurs think you go home, sort through, remove anything suspect (in our house, that’s anything with a discernible nutritional value such as raisins, apples and popcorn) and then put the candy up to be doled out for months to come, one piece at a time.

Pikers!

Me, I go with the tried-and-true “gorge yourself until you nearly hate candy” method.

Arriving home, the booty is dumped into two separate bowls lest we incite World War III with one sibling’s candy touching or in any way THINKING about touching another sibling’s candy. Perish the thought.

There is a brief — albeit blissful — period of time before bedtime to just eat candy with wild abandon. Have at it kids! Candy! Chocolate! Food shaped like severed fingers, cigarettes, pop bottles and lips! What’s not to love?

This lasts about 10 minutes and then I pack them both off to bed just before the stomachache can really kick in.

The 10-minute window is important for one very important reason: deniability. You cannot allow your little goblins to get a really good grasp on what exactly they’ve hauled home. At this stage of the game, the candy should be one blissful blur. This allows the parents to cherry-pick through it with impunity.

Great. As far as my children know, the Great Pumpkin is someone who swoops down Halloween night after they are tucked tightly in bed and steals all the Reese cups from their candy bowls.

Great Pumpkin is also known to have a fondness for Snickers bars, Milky Ways and Kit-Kats. The Great Pumpkin, it should be noted, wouldn’t eat black licorice on a dare. He is not heartless, no. He always leaves behind anything fruity, sour, chewy and prone to turning tongue, lips and teeth garish colors such as bright blue.

The Great Pumpkin is getting on in years and his dental coverage isn’t worth jack (o’ lanterns). That said, I do applaud the brave souls who give out toothbrushes and similar high-minded items as treats. I think it particularly kind of dentists to do so.

Just think of how beautifully they could drum up business with just a few bags of taffy and some business cards? They are obviously better than that and I salute them.

Fun. If you still trick or treat then consider yourself lucky. I suspect this is one tradition that may be dying on the pumpkin vine. If you do it probably means you are blessed to live where neighbors are friendly and the streets are safe. Where we have the freedom and the security to traipse up and down the streets at dusk. Where the laws of reality and disbelief are suspended for only one night and princesses, werewolves and pirates are on the prowl. Where, if only for one night, candy from strangers is graciously accepted.

As I peruse the basket for what the Great Pumpkin might like, I see those teeny tiny little candy bars barely visible to the naked eye are foolishly labeled “fun size” these days.

An inch and a half of chocolate is not a fun size. A candy bar as big as my head. One that took two hands to lift and maybe a dolly to get down off the porch. Now THAT would be a really fun size.

Maybe next year?

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