Halloween: the holiday that encourages dressing up and taking candy from strangers’ doorsteps. This beloved tradition and holiday has been celebrated for more than 2,000 years. For many, October 31st can be one of the best days of the year, giving people an opportunity to be someone else and to step out of their 9 to 5 suit and tie or school uniform and step into the world of make-believe. However, the debate on whether or not we will be having a Halloween this year has been a cause of neighborhood unrest. Of course, there will still be decorated lawns with spooky pumpkins and skulls no doubt, but without the children running rampant in the streets hopping from house to house, it simply will not be the same.
Many hope that Halloween can still continue for different reasons, however. For many toddlers, this will be their very first Halloween dressing up as their favorite superhero or scary monster. For many parents, this will be a very important scrapbooking moment. Many people across the country have tuned in to see what health departments and news channels have to say about this ordeal. For instance, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health made headlines earlier this month by contradicting their earlier prohibition of Halloween activities, like trick-or-treating, later changing its guidelines to say that celebrations, while not recommended, can occur. This gives hope that Halloween will not be canceled after all.
"I just don’t see how it’s feasible to do this safely," says Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Health and UC Davis Children’s Hospital. Adults don’t expect children to maintain social distancing recommendations as they walk around in groups and grab treats that many have already touched. Along with that, masks help mitigate spread, but they don't eliminate risk completely.
The high chance that Halloween will be canceled causes people to respond with different options in order to celebrate nonetheless. Some families have come up with the idea of Candy Launchers: using a pipe system to slide some of the world’s favorite sugary sweets into the children’s pails as they stand the recommended 6 feet away. This would be an exciting and fun way to continue the trick or treating activity without so much of the exchanging of germs.
A completely different approach to trick or treating has been made for those who don't want to take the chance of going out, but who still want to enjoy receiving candies. The idea, like Easter, involves parents hiding the candy through their backyard or house, letting their children race to collect them. A Halloween candy hunt seems like the best alternative for children to enjoy collecting candy without actually leaving their house. Plus, it would be satisfying for the parents too. They get to watch their children scramble about, shouting in glee every time they find a piece of candy behind a couch or a garden gnome.
Even though Halloween this year will not be exactly the same, one can only make the best out of this situation and have fun regardless. Who knows, there may even be children dressed as Spider-Man with a mask over their masks. Wouldn't that be something?
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