Halloween won’t change, despite Saints’ game

When the Saints go marching in, south Louisiana usually stops in its tracks – except when it’s a holiday and the night before school.

Because Halloween falls on a Sunday night this year, the same night the New Orleans Saints play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Superdome, the Terrebonne Parish Council originally had the idea to change Halloween celebrations from Sunday to Saturday night to avoid a conflict with the football game and to keep youngsters from staying out late prior to school.

But it was decided at last week’s Terrebonne Parish Policy, Procedure and Legal committee meeting that changing Halloween would cause too much confusion among residents.

“At the last meeting, I had asked that we put this on the agenda to sit down and discuss not so much changing Halloween, but the trick-or-treating from Sunday night to Saturday night,” Councilman Billy Hebert said at the meeting. “I had received some phone calls about doing this, and since I’ve announced it I’ve also received phone calls for leaving it as it is because it would probably be a lot of confusion for some parents.”

Officials were concerned there might end up being two Halloweens if trick-or-treating was moved to Saturday.

“It’s one of those things where you’d love to help, but Halloween is going to be on a school night five times out of every seven years, and there may be nothing we can do. If we change the night, in theory sounds great, but what’s going to end up happening is we’re going to have two Halloweens,” Councilman Kevin Voisin said. “I mean, as an enterprising 10-year-old, I definitely would have taken advantage of two possible Halloweens to try to get more candy, and I don’t know how you stop people from trick-or-treating on actual Halloween if we’ve created a Terrebonne Parish Halloween.”

The Lafourche Parish Council is considering a similar move, celebrating Halloween a day early. Councilman Clayton Voisin expressed concern about what the governing body will ultimately decide to do.

“Sometimes you have to watch the cans you open,” he said. “… what could possibly happen here is that if they move theirs to Saturday, people would be celebrating Halloween in Lafourche Parish Saturday night and the people that are on the border would be bombarded. Halloween two nights in a row could be a problem, especially on the roads with people moving from parish to parish.”

Hebert said he spoke with Lafourche council members and was told they were waiting on Terrebonne Council action, and would ultimately piggyback their decision.

Lafourche Parish Councilman Joe Fertitta told the Tri-Parish Times the parish will stick with Halloween on a Sunday, and keep trick-or-treating to the regular 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. schedule.

A vote was expected to take place at Tuesday night’s parish council meeting.

Instead of moving the day of Halloween celebration, Terrebonne council took action to change the time of trick-or-treating from its normal 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. time slot to 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

“I think that solves the problem, it allows those who want to go in early that peace of mind, and those who want to stay out can stay out. They just can’t knock on people’s doors past 7 p.m.,” Kevin Voisin said.

Both Houma Police Chief Todd Duplantis and Terrebonne Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois support the time change.

“I did call and speak to the sheriff, and he’s not in favor of changing the date,” Duplantis said. “My concern would be that Saturday night generally has more cars on the road than a Sunday, and you’ll have trick-or-treaters out on both nights.”

Duplantis also said there are usually four or five extra officers out on Halloween, and to have them out on both nights due to confusion would cause a budget issue.

“The sheriff doesn’t have a problem with changing the time from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and I would be OK with that, too,” he said.