This year’s Halloween is going to be different than those in most preceding years, where there was not a global health event occurring.
The blight known as COVID-19, AKA "coronavirus," AKA the "wu flu," AKA "dat ’rona," has persisted across the world and numbers continue to rise and fall, with the only thing predictable being the general uncertainty of it all. It’s made society reevaluate the importance of in-person meetings, events and all manner of social occasions. Thus, it is only natural to expect that it will influence the execution of every sane* person’s Halloween plans. Gone are the expectations of herding groups of festively-decorated children down dark, Autumn streets in search of candy and sweets. Missing are the Halloween parties for be-costumed adults in search of inebriation and sex. Absent are concerts and crowded public spectacles, such as the lighthearted and oft hilarious dunking of the elderly in ram’s blood.** Alas.
However, given the flexibility we as a community have shown in the ways we integrate the "new normal" into the "actual normal," we have come to expect that innovation will save this Halloween, thanks to some quick thinking and a few alternative ways to carry on with our favorite October activities. Here’s a brief list I’ve compiled, showing the substitutes to our usual traditions.
On your typical Halloween, most of the occasion centers around youth in fancy outfits, out for sugar or blood, in a madcap dash around the neighborhood, knocking on doors and being rewarded with candy for their trouble. But, given the mandate of social distance, wherein one must keep a proper, plague-resistant space between one another, how can children expect to do their usual gangbang of doorbells? The answer is simple: mechanical candy-hurling devices. The kids can stand on the curb and homeowners who would normally administer sweets by dropping them into sacks and pails can easily use some apparatus to fling the goods a suitable distance, that the eager bandits might catch it (or, at least, collect it off the street). An apparatus, you say? Why, yes! Ranging from a giant slingshot made of a coffee can and some surgical tubing between two posts, to elaborate pneumatic cannon, simple technology (most of which has been around since antiquity) can get the job of sugaring up the kids done from a safe, healthy distance. Bonus points if you build a trebuchet.
This humble activity, when children are encouraged to use their teeth to pluck a ripe apple out of a basin filled with water, is clearly a no-go for pandemic times. Dat ’rona will be all up on those kids before they know what hit ’em, if they do it the usual way. So, born is the alternative: basically the same thing, but the basin is filled with wholesome, sterile rubbing alcohol—it kills the virus on contact. Kids will love the new, spicy version of the old classic, and if they don’t, make them do it, anyhow. Come on...you’re the adult here.
You can still do this, but please do avoid the ever-popular tradition of everyone licking the pumpkins before they’re carved.
It’s difficult to get the ever-loving piss scared out of you by the diligent professionals*** who spend all year preparing for this, when anti-virus rules are in play.
This year, though, the scares will keep coming, but with certain precautions taken. For example, the traditional "room full of zombies who jump out and grope at you" will be replaced by a room full of one solitary zombie, who pokes at you from a distance with a toasting fork. The "lunatic asylum" room will be replaced with the "COVID-19 Cough-O-Caust" and the "chased by a maniac with a chainsaw" room will require a mask on the maniac. Though, this year, it’s legal for them to actually leave the blade on the saw, as well as abolish background checks for employees, so the spookiness will still be intact!
It’s a tradition in many places where corn exists in its natural, unpicked state, to make a maze from rows and rows of cornstalks, which challenges all who enter to successfully navigate their way to the exit. Not a whole lot is different this time, but folks will be admitted in intervals of ten minutes, as opposed to the more lackadaisical "come on in" methodology, to ensure that people have adequate time to get ahead before the next people are admitted. A wandering "corn warden" will direct stragglers and slow-in-the-minds toward an exit, as well as the subsequent stomach-punch for not mastering corn fast enough.
After the kids get theirs and pass out after crashing from their sugar rush, the adults typically go out in search of more sophisticated entertainment. This entertainment generally comes in the form of getting drunk and making moves on people whom you cannot see their actual appearance, leading to squirmy, makeup-covered, costume sex in the wee hours of the night. That’s a no-go these days. This time, the Halloween parties will all be done via Zoom meetings. The Monster Mash will be played in the group conference, everyone will drink their own cache of liquor and people will get a private chat to organize adult freakiness. Uber and Lyft discounts can be applied to anyone who wants to link up one-on-one in order to lock legs and swap Halloween gravy.
So, there you have it—the modern world’s solution to the restrictions imposed by disease and government. We wouldn’t have been able to do half of this without the technological advances of the 21st century, as we’d all still be stuck, alone, in a funny outfit, masturbating next to a pile of pumpkin guts.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
*Every sane person favors Halloween over Christmas. Fuck Christmas. Worst three months of the year. Just getting that out there.
**Well, we do it in Portland, anyhow. I dunno about the rest of you, but, if you don’t, you’re missing out.
***They are known as "haunters" and they take this very seriously.
Wombstretcha The Magnificent is a writer, ape suit collector, plague doctor, possible butthole surfer and retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (and MeWe, the no-jail Facebook) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
