Dam.
When I moved out of my first apartment and into a townhouse, I was pretty pumped for a lot of reasons. One exciting prospect was decorating my own place for Halloween and handing out candy. But without knowing it, I'd become a bit of a Halloween traditionalist. I was actually offended when I first heard that Des Moines homeowners handed out candy the night before Halloween, and that they called it "Beggars Night".
What's that all about? Halloween is on the 31st, and it isn't about begging. Halloween is chance to see your neighbors at their best when you are dressed at your worst. It's about teaching your kids that their community can be caring and giving. Halloween is one of the highlights of childhood, and opening your door to children is a nostalgia pipeline to your own... umm... oops. Sorry, I'm getting carried away... (steps off soap box).
Anyway, when the big night came and the doorbell rang, I popped open the door with huge bowl of regular-length candy bars in tow ("Fun Size"? What's fun about getting an inch of a Snickers bar? Might as well call it "You-Just-Got-Cheated Size"). Instead of "Trick or Treat!" yelled in unison, I was greeted by a tiny Frankenstein mumbling something about a booger and a skeleton.
Well that was weird, and it didn't end there. For the next two hours every vampire, princess, ghost, and zombie insisted on fumbling through a joke before reaching into the candy bowl. One little ballerina even had "joke notes" scribbled on her arm in her mom's handwriting (she was told to take two candy bars).
When I asked about the jokes the next day at school, the high school kids also insisted that that was what you did on Halloween. They were incredulous that I didn't tell jokes to get candy when I was a kid - some of the students looked at me like I was from Mars (candy pun).
The next year an article in the Des Moines Register newspaper answered my questions:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/99999999/ENT/41007010/Jokes-set-local-Halloween-apart
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