The first thing would be to have everyone in the neighborhood sign up on a listserv.

Have a scheduled time for "Halloween". Do the Halloween celebration during day time hours. Have a costume parade where one parent takes the costumed child around the neighborhood by walking or in a car...appropriately socially distanced. All neighbors can be sitting in their yard and wave and cheer people on.

Every one can decorate their yards beautifully and some small prize can be given for all varieties of yards (prettiest, spookiest etc).

Take pictures and post on the listserv. At night, people with kids in costume can drive by all the houses in their cars slowly and have some kind of halloweeny music playing...
Best yard and best costume can be given a prize or give prizes to everyone.

A committee can collect money and create goody bags for children with some candy, hand sanitizer, craft stuff.

You can also have pumpkin carving competition where you can display your pumpkin and people vote for it.

Actually there is lots that can be done. No actual candy collecting or trick or treating though. Will work in neighborhoods with TH and SFH that are not in humongous isolated yards and you can easily wave at your neighbors.

there's a reason stores took away all the salad areas, open grain bins, etc.

Leaving bowls of candy out so every kid touches the exact same sefving bowl is the STUPIDEST way to do Halloween during a pandemic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want candy from strangers during a pandemic.

We'll do something smaller. Our neighborhood will hold an outside party and have lots of candy at that.

But we won't go door to door, except maybe to people we know.

This seems backwards to me.

Or not really, because I think either option is relatively low-risk, being basically outdoors. But I don't see how a party would be safer, especially with what we understand now about the risk of people breathing on you, sustained contact etc. vs the negligible risk of fomites (residual virus on "things.") Also, who are these "strangers?" Your neighbors, presumable, most of whom you'd be having this party with?

No it’s lower risk to have a party at one with one family, the same family, we have been with since March.

I think these posts are just a miscommunication- most people don't consider 2 nuclear families getting together to be a "party"- that word conjures a bigger crowd.

Anonymous wrote:No safe way to do it. We might wear costumes all day, decorate the house, rent a scary movie, BBQ, and leave out candy for the idiots that go door to door. There parents “hope” we don’t have the virus.

+1

These parties y’all are planning are way riskier than just regular old Halloween. You can’t get Covid from a 5 second encounter with someone outdoors. And you can isolate the candy you collect before eating it.

We usually do low key just one or two streets of trick or treating, which I would be fine with this year. I may put the candy in a bag for a week just to be extra cautious before eating. But I don't think the actually door to door bit is unsafe. But we might also just do a parade around the street and then a big bowl of candy we bought ourselves at home - and that should be fine.

No safe way to do it. We might wear costumes all day, decorate the house, rent a scary movie, BBQ, and leave out candy for the idiots that go door to door. There parents “hope” we don’t have the virus.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want candy from strangers during a pandemic.

We'll do something smaller. Our neighborhood will hold an outside party and have lots of candy at that.

But we won't go door to door, except maybe to people we know.

This seems backwards to me.

Or not really, because I think either option is relatively low-risk, being basically outdoors. But I don't see how a party would be safer, especially with what we understand now about the risk of people breathing on you, sustained contact etc. vs the negligible risk of fomites (residual virus on "things.") Also, who are these "strangers?" Your neighbors, presumable, most of whom you'd be having this party with?

No it’s lower risk to have a party at one with one family, the same family, we have been with since March.