VERONA, N.J. — Never mind that Christmas decorations went up at malls across the country last week. In New Jersey on this November Monday, Halloween was officially celebrated, thanks to Gov. Chris Christie, who last week signed Executive Order 105, postponing it because of Hurricane Sandy.
Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Nicole Golden, 11, top left, held the hand of Jada Cook, 4, in skeleton dress, as they celebrated Halloween with Kaylee Johnson, 9, center, and Toni Ann Saporita, 9, on Monday in the parking lot of the Brick Township High School.
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Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Emma Anderson, 5, handed out candy from her mother's car.
"It would have been fine with me to cancel," said Bernadette Silvia, at a Halloween gathering here, who had already run through her two bowls of candy and was watching her 9-year-old son collect goodies from others. "You try telling the kids that."
With one in five homes in the state still without electricity and trees still draped across suburban streets, it was a struggle to make the holiday feel like normal. Towns tried to redesign the celebration for safety, canceled it outright or postponed it yet again, turning Halloween into the Holiday That Refused to Die.
It was the second year of so much confusion over Halloween: last year's freakish October snowstorm prompted many towns to try to postpone the holiday, only to be disobeyed in many places by defiant parents and their plastic-pumpkin-toting offspring.
"I'm starting to get used to it," said Pamela Calderone, escorting Tigger (Stevie, age 2) and Spider-Man (Connor, age 3) to a so-called trunk-or-treat event that parents had arranged at the town pool parking lot here to try to keep children off streets that in some cases remained dark.
Parents doled out candy from the backs of their cars or minivans, some decorated with cobwebs, tombstones and skeletons, as young hula girls, pirates and Captain Americas dashed excitedly among them. With parents clutching cups of coffee, it seemed more like a tailgate party. A few blocks away, a line for gas still snaked along Bloomfield Avenue.
Despite Governor Christie's order, communities varied widely with their holiday observances. In Montclair, businesses along Church Street and Bloomfield Avenue put up signs — as they did last year — promising to save Halloween, and offered generous helpings of candy to that end.
Brick, along the stretch of the Jersey Shore most damaged in the storm, also invited children to trunk-or-treat, as did Clark and West Milford, in northern New Jersey.
Nutley, where a young Martha Stewart developed her love of Halloween, canceled it outright, as did Linden, where many homes were still dark.
But Westfield, where nearly 100 roads remained blocked by downed trees or power lines, announced on Sunday that it would postpone the holiday "until further notice due to safety." Glen Ridge, too, postponed Halloween, until Friday.
The governor himself tried to get in the spirit, telling people forced out of their homes in Keansburg that he had left 34 cases of candy, donated by Nestlé, at a shelter where they were staying. "I'm sure the parents will really be thanking me tomorrow," he said.
Many people were left wondering whether it was worth all the fuss, when the only reward was the late bedtime ensured by the sugar rush of all the sweets.
"When I was a kid, Halloween didn't get rescheduled, you just dealt with it," one Grinch (the term seems appropriate, now that Christmas is practically here) wrote on Twitter. "There's more important things to worry about."
But others argued that children deserved — needed — a reward after being cooped up without power or school for a week. And that ultimately meant that many children doubled the sugary haul, as they did last year.
Jeannette Kozachuk, escorting Nicolas, 10, to the parking lot event in Verona, said they also planned to go door-to-door later.
"People may not be ready to give out candy," she said. "If you don't have a kid, you have no idea it's Halloween."
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