Saving / Safe-ing Halloween

September 17, 2020

This year, Halloween is on a Saturday, and early in the year, event planners were excited to make the most of it. Halloween has fallen on a Saturday three times since I've been publishing KOAA (19 years!), and in normal times, having Halloween on a Saturday is awesome: An extra weekend in October means extra prosperity for local festivals, farmers, and other community groups. 2020, though, is challenging.

When Los Angeles announced the cancellation of trick-or-treating the other week, it made international news, I think because it tapped into a sense of mourning that families everywhere have been experiencing: Aside from the actual effects of the virus itself, one of the hardest aspects of COVID for communities has been a deflation of the joy of normal childhood rituals and traditions.

"It's going to be a... a... lonely Halloween this year, isn't it, Mom?" a friend's daughter asked her the other day. "Is it totally canceled?"

Of course, Halloween is supposed to be scary... but faux-scary, not real-scary, and the idea of Halloween being dangerous is as heart-breaking as the idea of school being dangerous. But the human spirit is endlessly inventive, and I've been privileged during the last six months to watch creative people leap to fill in the gaps COVID has carved. So never fear, the people whose job it is to plan local events for your kids are busy reinventing Halloween to be a safer experience. 

KidsOutAndAbout.com is dedicated to helping connect you with SAFE Halloween activities. But to be most effective, we need your help to find them. So please, when you hear about upcoming Halloween- and fall-themed events, let us know, so our data team can hop on the haywagon to make them visible on our calendar. Members of organizations who already post to KOAA can log in right here to post in-person or online events, and regular readers can use this quick and handy alert-us form.

Halloween may be wearing a different costume this year, but smart people behind the scenes are busy with the redesign, and they're saving Halloween by safe-ing it. We've got this. Stay tuned.