I don’t know about you, but every day, I find something else that will have to change due to the pandemic. It dawned on me that our Thanksgiving meal would look different this year because we will “mix” family units, but we can’t wear masks while eating, obviously. We are a very small family, and it’s just the four of us and my mom, but my mom is in the high-risk group and has been extremely careful to limit her contact with anyone, even with us. So, how will we do Thanksgiving this year? I am not giving up eating with my mom, especially since we have only seen her three times since the pandemic started! However, we want to honor her and keep her as safe as possible when she has been so careful during this time. Plus, she would be all alone on Thanksgiving if we didn’t go see her! So, we have decided to eat in two different, but adjoining, rooms. I don’t mind though because it means we will see each other and enjoy food and fellowship together, from a distance or with masks, and I am thankful. We are just trying to keep our base traditions alive, but also keep our family as safe as possible in the process. We will keep you posted on how that goes for Thanksgiving, but I am thankful that we were able to celebrate Halloween, in pretty much the usual manner with only a few modifications! Here are our traditions and how we modified them if necessary:

  1. Watch Halloween Movies: I have a thing about holiday movies. No matter the holiday, it seems there is a movie for it. For a few years, I even had the tradition to watch Groundhog Day every February 2nd! It drives my family a little crazy because that movie annoys them, but I still do it occasionally if I can. Stay tuned for a future blog post with our list of favorite Christmas movies! Here are just a few of the Halloween movies that we watched this year. (I have listed my daughter’s favorites since she is the only one who truly enjoys watching the Halloween movies with me. These are all Disney movies, and two of them aren’t really Halloween movies…but, hey, these were her answers.)
    • Hocus Pocus-at home on Disney Plus AND IN THE MOVIE THEATER! Since theaters aren’t really able to run first-run movies right now, it is cool to me that many are finding ways to survive by running classics on their otherwise empty big screens. We had a girls night to watch this movie while we splurged on a ton of unhealthy snacks just this once, and seriously, you would have thought I was 12 again.
    • Halloweentown-at home on Disney Plus
    • Halloweentown II-at home on Disney Plus (Both movies)
    • Zombies (not really Halloween?)-at home on Disney Plus
    • Zombies II (still not really Halloween?)-at home on Disney Plus
  2. Trunk or Treat at church: Our church family is awesome. This didn’t change too much really, except that we distanced the cars, we had to wear masks, and participants were encouraged to find unique and innovative ways to hand out candy. This included two different entries who asked the trick-or-treaters to “fish” for their candy with fishing poles. It was quite clever and enjoyable!
  3. Pumpkin Patch: Our little pumpkin patch was open, and we were so glad! All we did differently was wear masks while picking out pumpkins and hand-sanitized like crazy when we were done. We also kept our distance from other pumpkin-picker-outers.
  4. Carve a jack-o-lantern: No modifications needed! We did this in the comfort of our own home with just our family.
  5. Trick-or-treat in some fashion: We live on a farm, so we don’t have any visiting trick-or-treaters, and we don’t really have any houses to go to in order to trick-or-treat ourselves. When I was little, we lived on a busy road and were not able to venture out in our neighborhood. So, we always made it a tradition to drive to several houses of close church friends and then my aunt’s house, so they could see my costume. Then when I had kids of my own, we also elected to visit people with the kids in costume, instead of staying in one neighborhood as well. We continued to visit my mom and dad, for as long as it was practical. Then in one neighborhood we lived in for a few years, we were finally able to trick-or-treat on our own street! But then when we moved to the farm, we drove back out to the old neighborhood to see our former neighbors and trick-or-treat there again. But this year, we didn’t want to travel far since we didn’t know what houses would be doing there, and we wanted to experience our little small town. So when we found out they were having a little downtown celebration, we decided to go!

See our video below to see how our Halloween turned out for us in 2020. I don’t like the term, “new normal,” but I was quite pleased that we have so far been able to adapt our traditions while still trying to stay as healthy as possible. We are trying to live and love life within the time period we find ourselves.

Comment below sharing what you did or did not do differently this year. Maybe it will give others ideas on how to modify traditions as well!