If it’s dark, how can we see if the kids are on our lawn?
Nine hours and fifty minutes up here today, and will dip below nine hours for about four weeks starting around December 7th.
I don’t mind it at all; the change of one season to the next is usually a relief.
Yeah, we’re below 10 hours of sunlight, too.
I would like to get rid of the time changing too, but don’t feel that strongly about it.
However, what does bug me is that the US changes its clocks on a different weekend than Europe. I have never figured out (or even really tried to) how each determines the dates to make the change, but they are always at least a week different from each other. Living in a multi-continental family and working in a global organisation, this always causes a few hiccups each time.
Despite many years of practice, my family/colleagues/self can’t ever quite remember that for those couple of weeks the difference is 5 or 7 hours instead of the usual 6.
(apologies if someone already made this point, but I couldn’t be bothered to read the entire thread and my search on ‘Europe’ did not find anything about this)
I think we used to change at the same time, until American politicians decided they wanted the sun to set later on Halloween, so children wouldn’t be walking on the streets after dark (as much).
Australia, obviously, changes the opposite way as us above the equator but at different times. I was there on business during the late in the year time change and the difference changed twice with one only being for a couple weeks.
Which is something that I thought was kind of bizarre - most trick-or-treating in my area has been after dark regardless of when the clocks changed back. Sure, sunset is an hour later now - but it’s not like I see many trick-or- treaters before 6 pm anyway. ( and those I do see earlier are really little kids with their parents).
Agreed.
Although it does push most of the evening committee into daylight, and maybe that’s a bet gain?
But i wouldn’t have wanted to go out trick-or-treating before dark.
Having grown up and done my TorTing before the DST extension it always made me wonder why no thought it was a problem to change the clocks right before Halloween.
As much as I wondered why my grandfather thought the week before we turned the kitchen itself into an oven on Thanksgiving was the time to put the storm windows in the kitchen door.
I grew up in a place where the norm was to do trick-or-treating on a night other than Halloween itself, and I’m pretty sure it was before the time change whenever that came late enough in the month. Like if the time change was on the 29th, they’d bump trick-or-treating back from the 30th (the traditional local date) to the 28th.
Also the choice of those who live in the western parts of their time zones. Latitude being equal, where you live in your zone can mean almost an hour’s difference on what time the sun rises and sets. For an individual solar event (rise, set, transit) this is greater than the change you would get from moving 10° north or south.
Moving due east or west, the number of hours daylight obviously stays exactly the same, but where those hours are “positioned” on the clock varies by up to a full hour. (That’s assuming an ideal time zone exactly 15° wide.)
At my location, standard time is already halfway to DST; I don’t want another hour of it in the winter.
Interesting. Here in my Chicago neighborhood, 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. is pretty much when trick-or-treating occurs. It’s pretty thin by 7 p.m. That’s how it was this year, and we got about 80 kids. Peak time was around 5:30 p.m. That’s what I remember as a kid, too. I don’t recall much of anything going on past 7. I would say about 80% of the trick-or-treaters were here by 6 p.m.
ETA: Yeah, I’m not crazy. Official hours here were 3 - 7 p.m.: Chicago Police Focus On Safety This Halloween, Trick-Or-Treat Hours | Beverly, IL Patch
Some of the southwest suburbs end at 6 p.m.; one goes to 8 p.m. Most are also 7 p.m.
That’s why - you have official hours in your area and people tend to follow that sort of thing. I don’t think most areas have anything like that and I have definitely never heard of that anywhere near NYC. I might get a couple of groups on the way home from school - but pre-teens are generally out till around 9 or so.
We had official hours in Ohio. We even had official “Beggars’ Night” scheduled by the local government. It was not always on Hallowe’en.
Yeah, what I see from NYC pages is that trick-or-treating generally ends at around 8:30-9 p.m., which to me feels crazy late with what I grew up with. People need to eat dinner, get ready for bed, and all that, not be bugged by trick-or-treaters. (Though we have the universal signal of “porch light on” = trick-or-treaters welcome, and “porch light off” = closed for business.) We had maybe 2 or 3 trick-or-treaters between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. (I don’t think most people even realize there are official hours in the city – I didn’t until a few minutes ago; I was just looking for a poll of residents about what they consider normal hours here), and then the sidewalks were empty.
I suspect most areas do, but I don’t know. Perhaps this calls for a poll.
4PM-8PM in some areas of NYC.
Dozens of streets to go car-free for trick-or-treating (ny1.com)
That’s about “open streets” , which are streets that are generally car-free everyday from 8am to 8pm. Some of the “open streets” had special activities from 4pm - 8pm . There were another 24 streets that were car-free just on Halloween. Closing an additional 24 streets in all of NYC has nothing to do with setting official hours for trick or treating - the article says nothing about that.
Nothing to do with official hours for trick or treating?
“Today Commissioner Rodriguez announced the activation of select Open Streets as Trick or Streets on Halloween night from 4-8PM.”
Sounds pretty official, to me. YMMV.
Official on those particular "select Open Streets "for trick or street events , sure, There are eight streets listed for Queens - do you imagine that all or even most of the trick or treating takes place on those few streets ?