No, parents. Halloween cannot be rescheduled, so stop freaking out about it. – NJ.com

It’s the conversation I can’t seem to avoid this week — at the bus stop, at daycare drop-off and in every community Facebook group I’m in.

It’s going to rain on Halloween. So will trick-or-treating be rescheduled? Will Halloween be bumped to Friday?

Whaaaaaat? A wholesale reordering of the calendar? Because it’s going to rain?

Yes, this is apparently a thing. Some towns are actually taking it upon themselves to declare Halloween is either a day early or a day late. They’re not just rescheduling private events, but completely changing the dates for town-wide trick-or-treating.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst — which in and of itself is a town with nearly 19,000 people on base — moved trick-or-treating to Friday. Hammonton’s “Quality of Life Committee” (apparently that’s an official group in town) decided to bump it up to Wednesday.

(UPDATE: That list has grown since Tuesday, but I’m still in the majority here. )

I can’t be the only parent in New Jersey who would happily see Halloween be a wash-out — if only to avoid the unnecessary candy overload — or would have no problem letting the kids run around in the rain. They’re kids. They’re not going to melt.

But there’s also something bigger at stake here: Parents’ desire to appease kids (and themselves) to the exclusion of any sort of potential setback or hardship.

Halloween is on Halloween and has been — or at least the commercialized version of it — since the 1900s. Does Santa reschedule Christmas when there’s a blizzard in the forecast? Or when it falls on an ever-so-inconvenient mid-week day? No. We shouldn’t be rescheduling Halloween either.

I’m partly convinced the people behind this latest movement are the ones who are disappointed at the thought of not collecting the Reese’s peanut butter cup parent tax from their kids’ baskets Thursday night.

And, if it wasn’t for the rain, they’d be complaining that Halloween falls on a weekday and should be officially moved to a Saturday. (Yes, there’s actually a movement urging President Donald Trump to take action on this. Sign the petition if you’re one of THOSE parents.)

Their gripes are about having to leave work early to catch their kid’s parade or make it back to their house in time to greet the early birds who start trick-or-treating the second school lets out. And, God forbid, the kids stay up late on a school night and are grumpy in the morning.

Here’s the thing, though: Life sometimes rains on your (Halloween) parade. That’s a good lesson for children (and their parents!) to learn. You have to buy an umbrella and make the best of it.

Granted, New Jersey did reschedule Halloween at least once in recent history. It was seven years ago after Superstorm Sandy when Gov. Chris Christie, in perhaps one of his most controversial decisions during his eight-year tenure, declared Halloween would be celebrated on Nov. 5. Parents in towns that were spared from Sandy bemoaned the switch. Whether or not you agreed with the decision, a once-in-a-century hurricane compelled it — not a rainy day.

Yes, my kids will be sad if I decide to tell them on Halloween that we won’t be going out in the rain to beg for candy at strangers’ doors and have me awkwardly remind them to say thank you as I stand in the driveway.

But they’ll get over it as soon as I dump a bag of chocolate on the living room floor and let them have at it.

We’re the type of family that milks the fun holidays for all they’re worth. Christmas decorations go up on Black Friday and when the first leaf drops on our lawn, we’re putting up the fall (OK, Halloween) decorations.

My kids — who are still of the dress-up and play imaginary games age — have already been parading their costumes around the house and at the grocery store for the past month.

They’ve already gone trick-or-treating in some shape or form at least three times. And if I was really ambitious and wanted to torture myself with the claustrophobia-inducing crowds and over-sugared kids, and eventual admonishing looks from the dentist, we could have found a dozen more events to go to. Boo at the zoo, indoor trick-or-treating at the local high school, a weekend of candy-filled festivities at a campground, not to mention the school parties and parades they’ll have on Halloween (rain or shine).

If your kids really pitch a fit on Halloween about not going outside, just work an umbrella into their costume and let them hit a few houses on the block to get their fill.

Seriously, they won’t melt — unless the Wicked Witch of the West is their costume.