Saving Halloween 2020

 

Halloween is hard this year.  Children won’t be trick-or-treating.  Costume parties will have to wait.  Haunted houses will be closed.  Haunted hayrides will have empty carts.  Past nightfall, our neighborhoods become ghost towns.  The only thing haunting the day is the dread of the virus ruining it all.  Okay, enough complaining.  I have some ideas I wish to share.

To enliven the dead end this pandemic has cornered the holiday into, here are some activities to make the most of Halloween 2020.

1.  Make your home into a haunted house.

2.  Tell ghost stories in a circle.  Pass the flashlight.

3.  Bake Halloween themed sweets.

4.  Watch Horror flicks and Halloween movies, of course!

5.  Have a Zoom meeting party between friends.

6.  Do a photo shoot for your costumes, and share the photos with friends and family.

7.  Move the furniture, and turn your living room into a dance club; play Halloween themed music.

8.  Have a treasure hunt in your home.  Hide a present or treat, and leave clues around the house.

9.  Play a spooky board game or card game, if available.

10.  Read Edgar Allan Poe or Howard Phillips Lovecraft stories.  If you have kids or you’re young at heart, read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

11.  Carve Jack-o-Lanterns anyway!

12.  Have your children do some theater.  They could act out their costume’s character, or be the opposite of their costume for comic effect.

13.  Tell fortunes (if your beliefs permit).

14.  Make spooky jewelry.

15.  Have a scavenger hunt, and the items go into a cauldron.  The designated witch, pulls out an item, and sends the child on a mission based on the item’s description.  I don’t know, just go with it from there.

16.  Use the same cauldron or a hat, and fill with papers with words written on them.  Pick one paper, and sketch whatever it is.  Have your friends guess the object.  This is kind of like Pictionary.

17.  Bob for apples.  (Make sure no one has COVID-19, okay?)

18.  Play Limbo.  You can use a broom or a hockey stick as the bar.

19.  Play other random party games from your childhood, like musical chairs, hot potato, leap frog, pin the tail on the donkey (or pin the facial features on the pumpkin), duck-duck-goose (or call it “Suck, suck, your blood!”), telephone/whisper around the lane, hotter-colder, etc.

20.  Pull out the Christmas tree, except make it into a Halloween tree.  Make Halloweeny ornaments.

21.  Have your kids trick-or-treat in the house.  Have them dress up and knock on the bedroom doors and get candy.***

22.  Write Halloween Haikus, or other Halloween poetry.

23.  Have your children write witches spells and potions; play make believe with a cauldron.  (Don’t drink the potions unless it’s just pink lemonade!)  Have your witch children turn the family into animals and they can do mimicry.  When they turn Daddy into a frog, he can hop around, saying “ribbit!”  Mommy can kiss him and turn him back into a prince.

24.  If you know how to do stage magic, show off some tricks.

25.  Make goblins out of playdough or clay.

26.  Make a Halloween music playlist.

27.  Make a horror movie drinking game. (If you choose an alcoholic beverage, please drink responsibly.)

28.  Study the history of Halloween.

29.  Make a pretend graveyard in your backyard.  On paper epitaphs, scramble the names of famous dead people or write clues so family members can guess the names.

30.  Make carmel apples.

31.  Bask in the full moon light.  Howl like werewolves.  Be thankful you’re still alive. 

***When I was little kid, I was bored one day and decided to play Halloween, and it was nowhere near that time of year.  I convinced my big brother that it was a good idea.  We dressed up in different costumes, and went up the basement stairs to knock on the door, saying “Trick-or-Treat!”  Our mother at first had no candy, but with enough persistent trick-or-treating, she gave us sticks of spearmint gum.  It was better than nothing.