Halloween lovers gearing up for beloved holiday amid CDC guidelines

While it’s been less than 11 months since Oct. 31, for many in North Idaho, Halloween feels like a hundred years ago.

After a still-ongoing global pandemic, still-ongoing social and racial divisions, a never-ending political season and even a week-long hazardous sky of smoke from West Coast wildfires, this year has been a hell-oween. Halloween, some hope, will serve as a one-night respite from the persistent ghoul known as 2020.

Chelsea Plunk has held Halloween above all other holidays for as long as she can remember. The Coeur d’Alene resident said she has no intention of staying home this year, COVID-19 be damned.

“To be honest,” she said, “I was going to ding-door-dash — since I live in apartments — and leave candy, like reverse trick-or-treating.”

The Centers for Disease Control released its guidelines for celebrating Halloween this year, cataloging the holiday’s activities into three categories: low risk, moderate risk and high risk. Those high-risk activities include traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating, attending crowded costume parties or maneuvering through indoor haunted houses. (The more intense and powerful the scream, the CDC warns, the further COVID-19 is likely to spread.)

The CDC considers “one-way trick-or-treating” — leaving out individually-wrapped and sanitized goodie bags on porches or driveways — a moderate risk, along with small, open-air get-togethers with masked-up guests practicing social distancing. Pumpkin patches, outdoor movie nights and outdoor one-way haunted forests are also considered moderate risks.

Low-risk activities, according to the CDC, include family and neighborhood pumpkin carving contests, virtual costume contests and family Halloween movie nights.

Whatever the risks people choose to take this year, Amanda Francis said locals are moving forward with Halloween, one way or the other.

“People have been coming up to our doors as soon as we put our signs up,” the manager of Spirit Halloween on Kathleen Avenue said. “Every day, people were knocking on our door, asking when we would open.”

Francis said Spirit Halloween opened on the morning of Aug. 28, their first customer coming through the door five minutes later. Since then, Francis noted that sales have been not just good, but scary good.

“We’ve been meeting expectations or exceeding expectations that corporate had set for us every day since,” she said. “At first, it’s been decor. Right around now — from the end of September to the beginning of October — that usually transitions over to costumes.”

Francis added that items deemed less successful in years past are making a comeback this fall: Trays and reachers that haven’t always found a market in the Halloween store are now in high demand, giving parents and hosts the tools to hold a safe holiday.

“Those haven’t ever been a huge thing for us in the past,” Francis said. “But this year? Yeah. It’s been encouraging, frankly. A lot of people are coming in, saying, ‘COVID isn’t going to stop me from enjoying my favorite holiday.’ And that’s especially important for their kids, because the little ones don’t understand what’s happening.”

Katherine Hoyer, public information officer for Panhandle Health District, said people, with a little creativity, can still enjoy the holiday safely, but that the desire to dismiss the dangers after a long summer of COVID — even for one night — can be disastrous.

“It’s understandable that some are feeling burnout or pandemic fatigue,” Hoyer said, “as we’ve been living with this pandemic for months now, and there is still no definitive end. The most important thing is not to give up. Continue to practice the precautions and stick to reliable, trustworthy sources for information.”

Plunk said that while she’s going to make changes, she still intends to have fun this Halloween.

“Idaho restrictions have been extremely lax,” she noted, “so I'm still going to go out once for the season. Other than that, (I’ll be) carving pumpkins at home, watching movies like 'Little Shop of Horrors' and 'Hocus Pocus' with friends over video chat, and a few tricks. I already wear a mask whenever I leave my home, which isn't often … Halloween can still be special. You just need to get creative.”

Francis said customers who come to her store — which also serves as a donation station for Shriners Hospital in Spokane — are determined to have a fun Halloween, whatever that looks like.

“As long as adults are making more of an effort to protect things, wipe things down, I don’t see why we can’t have Halloween, and a lot of our customers agree,” she said. “If Walmart can still pack their stores with people and stuff on their shelves, then there’s no reason you can’t go door-to-door and trick-or-treat.”