Whether your municipality is having trick or treat or not, the pandemic shouldn’t keep you from having fun this year. Debbie Lazaga takes a closer look at what trick-or-treating will look like this year around the world.
Just because you have to social distance, doesn’t mean you have to shut down ALL fun this year for Halloween. Some cities have put the kai-bosch on trick or treating, but many areas are still having it, including internationally.
Colin Westwater and his daughter Katie live in Glasgow, Scotland and they’re not letting the pandemic squash their fun.
He says, “In Scotland, we do Halloween much the same as America, but the traditional word in Scotland for going Trick-or-Treating is ‘Guising’.”
According to Wikipedia, The tradition is called “guising” because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children. Scotland has records dating back to the 16th century of “guising” where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money.
The pandemic has obviously had an effect on the holiday globally.
“Scotland has been in lockdown since March, to varying degrees. A lot of people are back to work. My Katie is back to school. But things are starting to ease up a bit. There is some more restrictive lockdowns but we’re all doing ok.” says Colin.
Colin’s daughter Katie is excited for the holiday too, even if it is modified. She says, “Usually, I would dress up and I would go trick-or-treating…guising, but this year we can’t do it so we’re gonna stick to down our street.”
She’s even going to be doing a halloween party on ZOOM this year.
Swinging back around to North America, my friend Amber Fair lives in Toronto, Canada and even though the different provinces are handling things differently, one thing she was surprised about, the scheduled trick or treating that we have in the states.
Amber says, “That’s interesting to me. I’ve never heard of that until online became such a big thing and you could get a glimpse into other countries. Just the concept of not having it on Halloween, or having a specific time for your municipality, none of that happens anywhere I’ve ever heard of.”
That said, her family has a clever way of handling the doling out of candy.
She explains, “We are going to give out candy, I think what we decided was to do almost like a lollipop pull. Where you bag it, however you’re going to bag it with little dollar store bag things. You stick them on shish-kebob skewers and then stick them in the lawn with a sign that says, ‘Take One’.”
So whether it’s a lollipop pull, candy graveyard in the yard, shooting the candy down a pvc pipe chute or even a Candy-pult… a candy catapult, it’s all about having fun.
Amber says, “At the end of the day, whatever you can do to make the kids happy, trick-or-treat around the house, make it fun, make it exciting. Do it in your own backyard if you have one, if you don’t have a backyard, do it in your house. Carve your pumpkins. You can still do it all, just not with strangers.”