Halloween: the holiday that needs no introduction (but I’ll give it one anyway). A whole season of the year dedicated to pumpkin carving, candy corn and scary movies – all culminating in one night for kids, teens and even adults to take to whatever social ventures they may. From trick-or-treating to haunted houses – as soon as the sun is down, the night is yours… Or at least that’s what it should be.

The biggest most dread-inducing pitfall of Halloween isn’t a curse from witches or ghosts – it’s much, much worse. It takes the form of the vilest, rotten and soul-crushing form one can imagine: school (or work) on the following morning.

All too frequently, Halloween falls on a day with school the day after and given the nature of the holiday this brings some obvious problems with it for kids of all ages. Nobody wants to deal with a cranky toddler who went to bed late and woke up early. Equally (if not more) difficult are drowsy teenagers. After the one and only night of the year delegated to the special festivities of Halloween, no teen will be raring to go at the crack of dawn the next day.

Not to mention the poor teachers who are left to their own devices to navigate these low-functioning kids. When it comes to school, a lack of time to rest creates problems for everybody. Even though the lens of an adult, having work the next day can present practical risks, such as dangerous commutes after a long night and subsequently poor job performance.

So, what’s the solution? It really is as easy as it seems: make Nov 1 a national holiday. Having this attached to the day after Halloween assures a day of recovery, greatly reducing the possibility of poor academic performance and risky drives. If an adult were to stay out late at a Halloween party and had to drive home in order to make it to work the next day, then they run a much higher risk of encountering others driving under the influence than most ordinary nights.

With a day of rest, they could skip the dangerous roads entirely and wait it out, creating a safer situation for everyone. Furthermore, integrating such a day into the school year would be extremely easy. Public school calendars often have an abundance of arbitrary and insignificant non-school days, so what stands in the way of moving one of those days from a random Monday to the first day of November?

Ultimately, Halloween is too important and vital to our culture as humans to eliminate it from our lives, and having school or work the day after presents practical concerns for all parties. With so little standing in the way of taking steps to quell these concerns, it’s a no-brainer that the day after Halloween should be a holiday – or a non-student day at the least – reserved for rest and recovery. Backed with the peace of mind knowing that you’ll have a chance to recover, we can all enjoy Halloween the way it was meant to be enjoyed: without the curse of school or work the next day.