Hey everyone! We are 42 days away from Halloween 2020! Exciting, right? What are your Halloween plans this year? Do you have any, or has COVID interfered? Let's talk Halloween plans in the thread today!
Various group events around town are getting cancelled, but they are the kinds of things that came along after my time and the time of my kids, so they're not really part of
my plans. My plans are very simple, with a routine I've followed for decades.
On October 30, I will carve a pumpkin with the traditional gap tooth jack-o'-lantern grin, and will set it in the garage to dry out just a bit. Late in the afternoon of the day itself I will place the jack-o'-lantern on the porch and position a votive candle inside.
Precisely at the time of local sunset (6:42 p.m., e.s.t.) I will light the candle and declare, "The holidays have begun." (More on this notion some other time.) Then I will sit in the living room, in the dark, reading my Kindle and drinking hot chocolate., waiting for trick or treaters, though we rarely get a single one since there are few children in our now older neighborhood. We will nevertheless be stocked with a supply of some candy which we can enjoy ourselves later. Occasionally I will go out to the street, and look up and down for any kind of movement.
[I come from a time and tradition where Halloween was a night of pranks and mischief, and it was advisable for someone to stay home and on watch to make sure the yard didn't get rolled, the windows soaped, the cars egged, the pumpkin smashed, the porch furniture thrown onto the roof, the trash cans or other loose articles carried down the street. Thus, my vigil.]
At 9:00 we will give up hope of any trick or treaters. At 11:00 we will blow out the jack-o'-lantern and go to bed.
Oh, and through this I will be cranking up my anticipation of the coming Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.
COVID can't mess with this.
