If Santa brings your children candy in their Christmas stockings, now is the time for Santa to shop. All the premature holiday decorations in the stores will get you in the mood, but the real draw is the left-over Halloween candy, now being sold at 50 percent off or better at discount stores. Some candy has Halloween motifs on the individual packages, but much of it does not. Do children really care if their Hershey's kisses are red and green colored? Not at my house.
Stash the candy in the freezer -- try using an opaque plastic container labeled "beets" or something your children find equally unappetizing -- and it should taste just fine come the holidays. To be honest, you wouldn't even have to freeze it. You can bet that the candy actually being marketed for Christmas stockings has already been produced. In fact, some if it is already sitting there on the store shelves, and more of it will come out as soon as they unload the Halloween candy at half price.
One of my girlfriends takes candy frugality a step farther. She waits until her little ones have gone to bed on Halloween night, and then she thins out the loot they received and stashes some in the freezer for Christmas stocking use. Of course, this will not work on children over 5 or 6, but it works with her preschoolers.
What, you say? Only an evil mom would steal the bounty these kids worked hard to collect all over the neighborhood. Wellllll ... it's a matter of perspective. She and I both feel that even in short walks around the neighborhood on Halloween night, our small children get way more candy than they should be eating. Add that to the sweets our kids received from well-meaning grandparents, and we have enough candy in the house to last until Christmas, when the deluge starts anew.
At this age, trick-or-treating is more about the fun experience than it is about eating the spoils. Personally, I don't put candy in the stockings, because my kids' grandparents give them more than enough on every holiday. So I won't be saving the Halloween treats for the sock.
However, I cannot guarantee there will not be a certain amount of, er, shrinkage of the stash. Affecting mainly the chocolate candy, especially that of the Reece's and Hershey variety, this shrinkage generally occurs between the hours of bedtime and 11 p.m.
What can I say? It's a spooky Halloween mystery.