In America, we cherish certain holiday traditions: On Thanksgiving, we eat turkey. On July 4, we wave flags. On Election Day, we stay home and see what’s on TV.

And, darn it all, on Halloween we get candy.

C-A-N-D-Y. Not carrot sticks. Not chimichangas. And not Cheetos and Doritos!

“You need a break from all that candy,” purrs Jared Doherty, spokesman for Frito-Lay, trying to justify why his company has started selling snack-sized packs of these salty treats as a Halloween candy alternative.

Cheetos for Halloween? Yeah, and how about surprising that very special someone with a giant Valentine’s Day Frito? Or delighting the kids with brightly wrapped, egg-shaped crackers on Easter?

How would you like to go to Rockefeller Center to see the tree all a-sparkle with gilded pork rinds?

It’s just not right! Holiday traditions mean something. When I see orange on Halloween, I want to see Reese’s wrappers on my bed, not cheese dust on my fingers.

Oh, and I guess I want to see pumpkins. Autumn stuff, yada, yada, yada. But really, Halloween is not about the harvest anymore – at least, not the harvest of gourds. Let us be frank:

Halloween is our harvest of sugar. It is our one chance to load up without guilt.

As my friend Melissa admits, “Normally I would never buy a huge bag of candy for the house, but I do buy huge bags of Cheez Doodles.”

On Halloween, gloriously, that gets reversed. Buying huge bags of candy is exactly what we are supposed to do.

This year, we will buy $2 billion worth of candy (and by “we” I mean Americans, not just the Skenazy household).

Some of this candy will actually make it to Oct. 31 uneaten. On that day we will hand out whatever is left to greedy little trick or treaters. But surveys show that once those angels (and devils and Jimmy Neutrons) are asleep, a full 90 percent of American adults admit to filching from the candy bag.

Do we want to reach in and grab the very same snacks we can get out of the cabinet any old day? Holy Hershey’s Kisses, no! We want Kit Kats and Tootsie Rolls and basically any candy that is not a Mary Jane, Sugar Baby or (my teeth ache to write it) Bit-O-Honey!

So Frito-Lay, do not try to elbow in on a holiday where you do not belong. Halloween is not a meal. We are not looking for lunch bag filler. Come Oct. 31, the only truly acceptable corn product is candy corn.

And even that I’d trade for a Snickers.

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