Halloween might actually feel normal again this year. Almost.
Trick-or-treating, classroom celebrations and town parades are making a comeback after Covid-19 concerns forced many festivities to shut down or scale back last year. Americans desperate for levity after many pandemic months say they are eager to embrace the holiday, even with some lingering Covid-19 precautions.
“This year we are going all out,” says Natalie LaLonde Wein, mother to 2-year-old Dylan and 11-month-old Lauren in the Washington, D.C., area.
Last year’s Halloween felt depressing, she says. She was pregnant, and trick-or-treating didn’t feel safe. Instead the family settled for taking a picture of Dylan alone on the sidewalk in his fly costume. “We couldn’t do the rite of passage with the little guy,” she says.
This year, Dylan will walk with his older cousins around the family’s townhouse community for trick-or-treating. Lauren, dressed as a bumblebee, will stay home with her father, who will distribute candy. And both parents will be able to watch their children’s day care’s outdoor Halloween parade, which got canceled last year, where Dylan will walk dressed as a llama character from a favorite storybook.
“It’s one of those emotional things as a parent because last year we couldn’t do that,” Ms. LaLonde Wein says.
Cities and schools across the country are bringing back festivities. Allentown, Pa., held a Halloween parade earlier this October, following last year’s cancellation. At the Peck School in Morristown, N.J., parents are once again invited to come in person to see their kindergarten and first-graders in costume at the school’s parade around campus after watching a live stream last year. In New York, the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade returned to John V. Lindsay East River Park this October after last year’s event moved to Zoom.
“Halloween is a big deal for me,” says Ruben Santana, whose dog Amun won the costume contest this year dressed as a doctor atop a float that thanked essential workers. Mr. Santana, who owns a pet styling business, skipped last year’s Zoom parade. Returning this year was a happy occasion, he says.
“Having Halloween back felt great. My creativity came back,” he says.
Nearly three-quarters of parents with children under 12 say their family is celebrating Halloween at least somewhat more freely than they did last year, according to an October survey of more than 1,200 U.S. adults by consumer research firm CivicScience.
Americans are expected to spend $102.74 per person on Halloween this year, compared with $92.12 last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
Analysts say that part of what’s driving the spending increase is an expansion of the Covid-alternative traditions that people started last year. With trick-or-treating, indoor haunted houses and big public parades on the outs, some families organized small outdoor gatherings or backyard candy hunts instead. Now, some people have kept those alternate celebrations.
“What’s driving it is rituals developed during the pandemic,” says Tim LeBel, president of U.S. sales for Mars Wrigley, which translates to a longer celebration season. Retailers are displaying Halloween products ahead of past years by about two weeks, he says.
Instead of trick-or-treating last year, Khelin Aiken got her son together with two other 3-year-olds from the neighborhood for some backyard candy-hunting and marshmallow roasting. This year the family still won’t go door-to-door for candy but will hold a bigger outdoor celebration for her son, now 4, and 6-month-old daughter. Ms. Aiken and her husband, both lawyers in Springfield, Va., are grilling kebabs and hot dogs, staging an elaborate scavenger hunt with maps across several backyards, and inflating a borrowed bounce house for neighborhood friends and family.
This year they are inviting eight other families, compared with two last year. Ms. Aiken says she has spent around $600 for decorative cobwebs and tombstones, family superhero costumes, gift bags, candy and food for guests, compared with about $100 last year.
“This Halloween is about building memories, building family traditions,” says Ms. Aiken. “It’s about having fun together.”
Cincinnati dad Andrew Beattie achieved a degree of fame last Halloween when an image of the 6-foot candy chute he built to facilitate socially-distanced trick-or-treating went viral. He’s adding a new decorative element to the chute this year—an orange Styrofoam jack-o-lantern at the bottom that kids can hold their bags under—“to fancy it up a little,” he says.
“It’s good to continue to evolve traditions and add to them,” he says.
