It’s Halloween again, the one night each year when children across America go trick-or-treating, only to have their candy taken away because some crazy person might have loaded it with a razor blade.

I also used to be told not to eat apples or any other fruit, in case they were poisoned. This was unnecessary advice to give a 9-year-old. As Charles Darwin noted in his book “The Origin of Species 2: Gettin’ Specieser” (now a major motion picture), rejecting healthy food on Halloween is as natural a human survival instinct as the one that makes old people spend so much time discussing their bowel movements.

The apple houses were bad, but the worst were those yokels who, in lieu of candy, gave out little 8-page illustrated pamphlets trying to sell young children on whichever of the One True Religions they believed in. Question: If you were really doing God’s work, then wouldn’t He stop all those children, mad about receiving pamphlets instead of candy, from throwing dozens of eggs at your house? Or perhaps His plan is for you to construct a Great Holy Omelet.

My friend Ellen told me about the lousy Halloween tradition observed in her family. Her mother used to make her divide the candy into two equal piles, and while Ellen slept, the “Halloween Fairy” took half in exchange for a gift. “It was usually some crappy coloring book or something,” Ellen said.

To see how it has come to this, we should examine the origins of Halloween. Hundreds of years ago, around harvest time, Gaelic communities would celebrate with a great festival at which townspeople would come from across the land to exchange religious pamphlets. The elderly, too dignified and stoic for such trivialities, would sit around talking about recent bowel movements.

Eventually pretty much all the Gaelics (Gaes?) had converted to the ancient and reasonable belief system of Scientology, so there was no longer any need for pamphlets. Instead, they sent their children door-to-door to collect assorted edibles. They would then crack open these foodstuffs and take out the precious razors that had been inserted as a “trick.” Razors were not commercially available in those days because they had not yet been invented, so they were quite valuable.

Aside from trick-or-treating, the other major Halloween activity is dressing up. One way to get a costume is to go to a seasonal Halloween retailer, where you will find a wide variety of options: Slutty cheerleader, slutty pirate, slutty maid, slutty nurse, slutty tax accountant, slutty secretary of state, respectable prostitute, etc.

According to Thorgsten V. Christberg, a professor in cultural studies, psycholinguistics and alchemy at probably Harvard or somewhere, “This particular oeuvre of ‘slutty’ costumes showcases the desire of an entire generation of young women to HOLY COW DID YOU SEE THE BAZONGAS ON THAT SLUTTY COP?”

We young people have become used to slutty costumes, ever since that seventh-grade Halloween party when that girl we never noticed before, the one who had secretly grown a pair of weapons-grade bosoms under a regimen of baggy sweatshirts, made a brief appearance dressed as a Hooters girl before she was expelled from the school district for making our classmates spontaneously combust.

But getting back to my point, you can buy your costume at a costume shop. The advantage to this is that you do not have to sew anything, although the disadvantage is that premade costumes are constructed with a fabric with the approximate thickness of mosquito boogers. This is especially cruel because it somehow always rains on Halloween, despite it also being below freezing. Meteorologists have devoted entire careers to this phenomenon but still have no answers.

Here is a fun costume idea I came up with that you can feel free to use: Wear a black stovetop hat, a fake beard, a black bow tie and a bustier with a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation tucked snugly in the cleavage. You are “Slutty Abraham Lincoln.” This same principle can be applied to other important American historical figures: Benjamin Franklin, Dwight Eisenhower, Tiger Woods, etc.

(Warning: It will not work with everybody. For example, no amount of drag would make you “Slutty J. Edgar Hoover.” You would just be “Regular J. Edgar Hoover.”)

One of the great things about the holiday is that it is always changing. I’ve been hearing a lot about “Trunk or Treating,” wherein families drive to a parking lot and children go from car to car gathering candy. This eliminates the biggest concern parents have about Halloween: Namely, that their kids might accidentally experience physical activity. As a side benefit, many of these are organized by churches, so children can be reassured there is no such thing as ghosts, goblins, witches, Harry Potter, slutty nurses and so on by the clergy, a wise group that knows better than to believe in the supernatural.

At least the trunk or treaters still get candy. According to an article in the Buffalo Grove Countryside, Buffalo Grove Village President Elliott Hartstein issued a proclamation at a Board of Trustees meeting requesting residents hand out “pencils, stickers, coins and plastic rings” instead of candy. The article described the crowd at the meeting as “noticeably confused.”

Village Trustee Jeffrey Berman is a man of principle. “I have no reason to stop giving candy,” the article quotes him as saying. “I can’t even name a good non-edible treat.” There is no way to predict what could happen as a result of this tiff. I grew up in Buffalo Grove, and it would not be surprising if its civic government disbanded over the issue of Halloween candy.

Whatever the future holds for Halloween, you can still go and enjoy it this year. I hope to see you all celebrating tonight at the bars.

I’ll be the guy in the stovepipe hat and bustier.