When Maria and I first talked about getting married, we looked at where we might want to live. We had lived in Hanover for a few years each, but didn’t know if this is where we wanted to settle permanently.

The longer we thought about it, however, the more we realized we didn’t want to leave.

We didn’t have that far to travel to Lancaster or Baltimore to visit our families. We had a nice quiet neighborhood to raise a child. We grew quite fond of local traditions and customs.

The local paper has had a lot of back-and-forth about our local Halloween traditions. I don’t like to get high and mighty, but the newcomers should back off.

Halloween is a huge deal in my town. Because of that, the schedule is screwy to the outsider, but makes pretty good sense when you get into the routine. Hanover has a huge Halloween parade on the last Thursday in October every year. People come long distances to compete in or just enjoy the parade. When Comcast took over our cable system last year and announced they would not broadcast the parade live, people weny nuts. They eventually changed their mind.

The parade caps off a week’s worth of activities. That means the Miss Hanover pageant is the Monday of parade week and Trick or Treat night is the Tuesday of parade week, not Oct. 31.

This is one of those rare years when Trick or Treat will take place more than a week before Halloween. Some people make it sound like locals have decided to kill all the first-born males in town.

When we first moved here to work for the paper, we heard all kinds of stories about locals who wouldn’t give newcomers the time of day. I have to say I have not experienced much of that. In fact, I have found most people I have encountered over the past 15 years nothing but proud of the area.

They only tend to bristle because round after round of new residents have come in and told them why things need to change in order to make life better. The reality is, some things don’t need to change.

I had trouble figuring out the whole Halloween issue at first just like the people up in arms because kids don’t get their candy on Oct. 31. But I figured it out. It’s really not that hard.

Sure, it might make sense to have kids go from door-to-door on Halloween proper. It might even make sense to move the date back a week in year’s like this when the month has a Tuesday left after the traditional trick-or-treat date.

But what good are local traditions if you go messing with them just because things happened differently where you came from?

I’m not standing here telling the newcomers to deal with it or go home. I just want them to try and realize that when a community has a long-standing tradition, it exists for a reason.

That reason may just be memories of days gone by, but I don’t think that is such a bad thing. So many people move to the area to get away from the impersonal ways of cities and large suburbs, so embrace the quirkiness of the small town instead of criticizing your new neighbors.

Look at the Fourth of July. Not every community shoots off fireworks on the day we celebrate our Independence. Some towns try to schedule it on a weekend. Some do it as part of a larger summer celebration. And some do it on the Fourth like Hanover does.

That doesn’t make any of the celebrations less meaningful Everyone figures out what works best for them.

The same goes for Halloween in Hanover. The whole deal is much more than picking a trick-or-treat day to confuse newcomers. With the Miss Hanover Pageant and the parade, the area has a chance to celebrate the holiday in grand fashion.

Could things change down the road? Sure. But I hope if that day comes, it’s because the area has found a new way to show their excitement for Halloween, not because someone who moved from Baltimore or Arizona or Ohio found themselves inconvenienced.