There are at least three levels of wackiness. We'll get to the extremes in a minute, but first the great middle ground. It is a time of approved begging. Kids out after dark, going door to door, loot sacks in hand, giving all the neighbors the opportunity to reverse the 'taking candy from a baby' syndrome. This year it seems they started much earlier with a new advertising approach, raising the suspicion that adults might actually be feeding their own sweet tooth under the guise of buying Hallowe'en candy.
Every organization has some cause to support.
I am not here referring to the distortion of the day that results in stopping by the police station to run the kids' candy through a metal detector. That is simply a spillover of nineties nastiness into parental paranoia. Now about the extremes. On the one hand is that group who wants to take seriously the superstitious origin of the day. In the history of Christendom it was the practice to set aside a day to honor a particular saint, but over time they collided with the finite number of days in the year.