Hi, friends! It’s October, best month of the year! The weather’s finally cooling off, the leaves are turning (and hopefully will get all the way done before a snowstorm kills them all), I can wear boots without looking like a crazy person, etc.
And normally there’s Halloween! I mean, there’s still Halloween. But this year it’s a bit anxiety-inducing, isn’t it? What’s safe? What isn’t? How do I still make it fun for the small, mobile ones?
They’ve recommended against trick-or-treating, and it feels like the trunk-or-treats have the same issues (which, I’m assuming, are “lots of people touching the same things” and also “the potential for someone COVID-positive to spread a lot of germs and make it near impossible to contact trace”).
Next Door has announced their Halloween map for the year. Normally you can mark that you’re giving out goodies and any specifics (for example, I normally take part in the Teal Pumpkin movement, where having a teal pumpkin set out indicates you have alternatives for kids who can’t eat candy due to allergies), but this year your options are for having decorated, doing a costume wave parade (where, I’m assuming again, you stand outside and wave at the kids and admire their costumes?), or having put out pumpkins.
Sad times.
I know people who are still planning on handing out candy to trick or treaters (bad idea, but I’m not surprised), or doing an alternative like setting individually wrapped candy out on a table (if you think kids aren’t going to touch more than one bag you don’t know children) or a candy slide (where you don’t get close to the kid(s) but you’re still touching the candy before you give it to the kids, yay) and the whole thing just makes me anxious.
Part of me wonders if I’m being overly cautious. But we’ve lost a family member to COVID already and have had a few more seriously ill from it, and the rest of me acknowledges that sometimes, if something feels like a bad idea, it actually is.
My current plan is no trick-or-treating, either giving out candy or collecting it.
Instead, we’re thinking of having a small party in the backyard. Buy a ton of candy so the kids don’t feel like they’re not getting their sugar fix. Invite over the cousins and maybe a few close friends. Ten people, tops. Everyone wears masks.
(My neighbor has offered the idea of moving said party to the front yard so all the neighbor kids can participate, but I’m a bit hesitant because 1) being in the front yard encourages any crazy people who are trick or treating to come stick their face in it, and 2) I think we’d lose the cousins/close friends.)
(Also, the small, mobile ones interact with the neighbor kids on a near daily basis so it’s not like they don’t get to play literally all the time.)
It’s sad, but I think it’ll be for the best. And maybe we can walk around and look at decorations.
And hopefully next year, things can be more normal.
How are you feeling about Halloween, friends? Going to go forward like normal? Taking precautions? Blowing the whole thing off?