How Many Days Until Halloween? 4 Days Left on Oct. 27

Four days left, and everything that remains can be done on foot. Halloween is four days out, on Saturday, October 31, with three weekdays and one weekend day between now and then.

The job to finish this week decides whether every child on the street can take part in the evening.

The final allergy check

About one in thirteen children has a food allergy, according to the advocacy group FARE. On a block expecting thirty visitors that means two or three children will hand back or abandon a large part of what they collect. Fixing that takes one trip to a discount store.

The Teal Pumpkin Project, which FARE began in 2014, treats a teal pumpkin on the porch as the signal that a house offers non-food treats as well as candy. Glow sticks, pencils, stickers, small toys and temporary tattoos cost about the same as a fun-size bar and carry no risk. A painted pumpkin works as well as a bought one, and a printed sign does the same job as the pumpkin.

Separation is the part that matters most. Keep non-food items in their own bowl rather than mixed with candy, and keep food in factory wrappers. Cross-contact is the real hazard, not the individual item. A child with a peanut allergy who takes a lollipop from a bowl holding peanut butter cups has a problem the lollipop did not cause.

Non-food treats have a second advantage that rarely gets mentioned. They keep. A bag of glow sticks and pencils bought this week will still be usable next October, which means the cost per year falls rather than repeats. Candy that does not go out has to be eaten by someone.

For a household with a child who has an allergy, the useful work this week runs the other way. Sorting the collected bag at home goes faster with two containers than one, and a child who knows which items are safe before the bag is opened spends less of the evening waiting.

Four days is enough to buy glow sticks, paint a small pumpkin and print a sign. It is not enough to order a teal pumpkin online, which is the sort of thing to find out before trying.

For households that will be out, the same logic applies to a bowl left on the step. Non-food items survive an evening outdoors. Chocolate does not, and a bowl of melted candy is a worse outcome than an empty one.