Halloween

I always look forward to Halloween - it's a fun holiday everyone can enjoy, with costumes and candy, and no religious or family obligations. We treat it as a fun night to see our neighbors and be generous with kids. Despite the many precautions we've taken this year, I felt like trick-or-treating was a relatively safe activity for both givers and receivers of candy.

But everyone started talking about cancelling trick-or-treating, and instead organizing "trunk or treat" or other events. To me that makes no sense - why would you cancel a dispersed, nightlong activity, and instead gather people at a specific place and time to congregate?

Also, many people created (and some communities mandated) little bags of candy and treats, rather than handing out loose candy. Candy is already individually wrapped, and we give out full-size bars anyway, which I figure are equivalent to a handful of the mini ones.

So I bought some chocolate and decorated and made a plan, unsure of how it would go. Our street is relatively quiet and easy to skip anyway, and it sounded like a lot of people in our area weren't going to participate.

I am happy to report that, in our neighborhood at least, Halloween was a success! We created a path down our front yard with lights and signs. My husband stood in the yard and directed kids to a table on the front porch, where I handed out one candy bar at a time (contactless), with hand sanitizer in between. Then kids exited to the side and down the driveway, to avoid passing people coming up the yard. We played fun Halloween music throughout, and sang and danced between groups of kids. We ended up with 54 trick-or-treaters, which is about what we'd get in a usual year, but it seemed like there were more small groups throughout the night, rather than a big rush all at once. And the kids were very well behaved and most wore masks (some even worked it into their costume, like a doctor or a ninja). Most groups seemed to have parents with them - even the older kids - which I'm sure helped.

The only disappointment was that we usually hand out hot apple cider for parents, and since there's no good sterile way to do that, we opted not to offer it this year. But one mom came up with her own mug, which we usually fill for her! Hopefully next year 🤞