The Halloween Get-Together

Most Halloween hosting is not a party. It is six adults in coats at the end of a driveway, holding drinks, while children go door to door without them.

Plan for that and it is one of the easiest nights of the year.

Nobody is sitting down

Everything has to be eatable standing, in a coat, holding a cup, in the dark, while watching a child two houses away.

So: no plates that need cutting. Nothing that needs a fork and a surface. Nothing that goes cold in four minutes.

What works:

• Chili or soup in mugs — one hand, warm, no cutlery
• A pot of something warm to drink, with and without alcohol
• Bread, cheese, and things you pick up
• One tray of something hot that reappears at 7:30

The warm drink is the whole thing

Whatever else you do, have something hot. Cider on the stove, hot chocolate, mulled anything. It costs almost nothing, it makes the house smell right, and it is the reason people stay for the second hour rather than going home when their kids do.

Leave it on the lowest heat with mugs beside it and let people help themselves.

Candy is not a food group in your plan

Buy the candy separately, buy it later than you think, and keep it somewhere other than the kitchen. It is not part of the spread and if it is on the table by six it will be gone by seven.

Two rooms, one door

The house divides itself on Halloween: people in the warm, and people at the door. Set it up so those are not the same person all night.

Put the bowl somewhere anyone can grab it. Put a chair by the door. Then whoever is nearest handles it, and you are not the only one who has answered it forty times.

The 8pm shift

There is a moment when the small children go home and the evening either ends or turns into something else. Have one thing held back for it — a dessert, another pot of the warm drink, a spot to sit down.

That is the difference between a night that fizzles at eight and one people remember.