A brief history:

Halloween is a holiday meant to celebrate the dead and eat (stuff your face with) candy. This holiday was originally intended to mark the end of summer and the start of the harvest season that lead to winter or as the Celts thought of it, death. 

The Celts believed on one night a year the boundary between the living and dead thinned enough to where ghosts could destroy crops but they could also make it easier for shamans to see the future. They relied on the shaman’s predictions to bring them comfort during winter (a.k.a death season).

To celebrate the event the Druids would build large fires for people to gather around to burn crops and sacrifice animals. The Celts would often make masks out of animal heads and costumes out of their skins. 

Halloween now is celebrated a bit differently. We have costumes of our favorite characters in the place of animals and we trick-or-treat instead of celebrating the ghosts and the harvest. But this year, in the midst of a global pandemic our normal way of celebrating isn’t safe. At-home activities are the best option for Halloween this year.

The list of activities:

1. Pumpkin carving competitions

Gutting pumpkins is a lot of fun when you have incentives or bragging rights. And the competition is just as fierce at home with your family as at a real event. If you are absolutely dreadful at actually carving the pumpkins like I am, then you can just paint the outside and they’ll last a bit longer. Worried about your pet eating the seeds? Just separate them from the gunk, wash them off, throw some cinnamon and sugar on them, bake at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-45 minutes, and you can eat them yourself.

        2. Binge-watching horror movies

Not everybody likes horror movies, but there are some out there that aren’t that scary. For example, The Shining, My Babysitter’s a Vampire: The Movie, and Halloween Town 1-4. Though in my opinion, the best horror movie is The Silence of the Lambs.

         3. Baking Halloween themed goodies

The good thing about this is it can be any type of food. In the mood for Mexican? Mummy enchiladas sound good. Italian? Worms (noodles) and eyeballs (carefully crafted meatballs) are a top choice. There are so many dessert choices: zombie cookies, eyeball cake pops, pumpkin spice cake or lattes, monster rice crispy treats, or brownies with icing and marshmallows to look like a graveyard. The possibilities are endless.

        4. DIY Halloween Decorations

There are tons of things to decorate with that you might not even think of like drying hot glue to wax paper in the shape of a spider web or cutting holes in pumpkins and putting fake rats or spiders in it. 

       5. Have a scavenger hunt in your house 

Nooks and crannies are in everyone’s home. Make a fun game with different weirdly specific objects you own, so they can have a purpose. The winner, or whoever finds the most stuff, gets whatever prize you deem fit.

       6. Halloween themed science 

You don’t have to be Einstein to do a few cool science tricks. If you feel it’s necessary, fire extinguishers are only 15 or 20 dollars at Walmart. Making crystals is relatively easy and so is the dancing worms experiment.

Trick-or-Treating, or having the candy for trick-or-treaters, has probably been a tradition for years, while this is an opportunity to make new traditions.