Trick or Treating WWTPD?

I am not sure what we are going to do this year. I love Halloween, it is my favorite holiday to decorate for and we go all out with a haunted walkway up to our front door. We are also a full sized candy bar house, I’ve always wanted to be “that” house.

I think this year we will skip the haunted walk way and set up a table on our drive way. We will stay in the garage to see any costumes but we will leave the candy on the table at the end of the driveway for kids to take. I’m going to chat with neighbors and see what they are going to do, I don’t want to encourage people to come in our street if no one else feels comfortable having trick or treaters come by.

I guess right now I think it is too early to decide. But, I am also in the camp of thinking it isn't really that difficult to ToT safely? We don't run into a lot of people as it is, it is easy to just wait until one group is done at the door and then go up. People often let the kids grab the candy anyway, and it is often cold enough that we need gloves. Masks would not be a problem. Unless there is something I am missing, it doesn't seem that risky to me.

I can’t tell if you’re joking but it’s hilarious either way!

We won't be doing the usual as my husband's cousin's neighborhood is a mob scene for trick or treating. The police close off the street and a whole town's worth of kids end up there. Even though our state has some of the lowest Covid numbers, that situation would not be comfortable. My kids have been working on how to incorporate the mask into their costume, we'll be outside and go to only a few prearranged houses in less busy neighborhoods. Wash hands after and set aside the candy for 3 days and that ought to do it. I will have candy on hand since my kids have to trade a bunch out due to allergies. We also plan on making haunted gingerbread houses.

This part is enough for me to say NO WAY would my kids be TOTing, no matter how disappointed they would be. 

I'm curious to know how many cases there currently are where you live, and how big the population in your area is. Just trying to compare what's happening here to what's happening there. We're still in stage 4 lockdown after the second wave hit, and I don't expect to be any better than stage 3 by the end of October, so it's highly unlikely we will be permitted to TOT (even though it's not a big thing here). 

My kids are all adults, I still always pass out candy on Halloween. This year I don’t think I will. I haven’t heard of anything being said by the city itself.

I could end up changing my mind, we’ll see. Right now I don’t feel much like celebrating anything. If it becomes R vs L fight like masks, I definitely won’t participate. Our town site on FB already has people saying, they can’t tell us there will be no Halloween.

the CDC says no trick or treating this year. have a party with family members.. but no haunted houses, no t or t...check it out
I would not be doing it.

I'm keeping my decorations inside the house in the windows..

If(big if) my area allows trick-or-treating, I'm planning to make individual closed goody bags of wrapped treats placed in rows in boxes I won't touch for several days before Halloween. Or maybe non-food, coloring or word search books from the dollar store. On the day, we'll put them on a table by the driveway. We enjoy seeing the costumes on the kids, but we're staying in the house.

This is how I feel too. We opted for 100% virtual school this year. It would make no sense whatsoever to do what we normally do which is to have multiple families with multiple kids of various ages go on our hay wagon around our large, spread out neighborhood. Even though it’s outdoors, it tends to be cold here so the kids all end up huddling together to stay warm as they ride on the wagon between houses. Halloween is DH’s favorite holiday and he is still on the fence as to whether we should offer to do it or not (my vote would be no, DD could go either way since she’s kind of a germaphobe anyway). 

We normally give out full size Hershey bars here, and there is no way that I’m going to put a full bowl of those out on the porch unattended so the first middle school smart ass that comes along can dump the bowl in their bag and take them all.

Part of me still wants to do something but I quite honestly don’t know what that would be. Someone mentioned using a 6’ long PVC pipe (or I think a plastic rain gutter could work too) and sending the candy down the chute to social distance the distribution (which I think is the major issue, multiple people getting face to face even with masks). I think the addition of a bucket or bowl at the end to catch the candy at the bottom is a good one. I’d like to rig something up so I can stand inside my storm door at one end of the tube and shoot the candy to the bottom of the front steps 8’-10’ away so they never even have to come up to the house. It would certainly be helpful to not have to open the storm door with our dogs even under non Covid Halloween circumstances.

We have security cameras at all of our doors, so I know when someone is there before they get to the door anyway. Plus our dogs are also always on high alert and go berserk when they see anyone coming up our long driveway, so there’s that too. I think if I make it into a Rube Goldberg challenge for DH to design something he just might take the bait and invent something! We could also place some neon duct tape markers 6’ apart on our front walk like they have in the stores and at school so the kids know where to stand while they wait for their turn to get their treat.

This is so creative and fun!

My kids are grown.  We are having a Halloween party with our extended circle.  However, I plan to wash my hands and bag up ziplocs of treats and leave them scattered at the end of my driveway.  I love Halloween.  And it breaks my heart to think that the children won't get a Halloween like normal.  I  have decorated my entire yard for the kids. 

I"m planning to give out candy. I'm undecided how that will work. Usually I sit on the porch and give candy as the kids come up. But maybe this year I'll a small table on the sidewalk and leave a few bags of candy as I see kids coming. Keeping social distancing.

That is where I am at, too. I was on the fence, but the CDC has advised against it.

I love Halloween, sigh.

I won't be giving out candy this year. Both my husband and I are medically compromised (my husband especially so) now. Not worth the risk for us. We don't have as many children on the block anymore so numbers were already going down.