No Early Christmas Decorations Here

Photo by Paul Solomon on Unsplash

On November 7th, our neighbors put up outside Christmas decorations. So far, there is a giant lit-up Snoopy from The Peanuts and some lights on their tree and bushes.

The weather in Chicagoland this past weekend was actually gorgeous — 70 degrees and sunny. It was definitely an opportune time for such a task.

But my husband commented to me a few days later, “What the actual heck? Why do they have their Christmas decorations up so early?” And I responded, “It’s 2020. People need to do whatever makes them happy at this point.”

Our Halloween looked very different this year. I have many indoor decorations that rotate through the seasons, including some specifically for Halloween. But as a household, we have never ventured much into outside decorating. Mostly because it seems like a lot of work.

But every year when we go trick-or-treating, my kids beg for us to up our game when they see other houses with giant dangling skeletons, lit up pumpkins, and doors that look like monster faces. Every year I sidestep and say, “Well, it’s too late this year…. maybe next year.”

Turns out, “next year” became 2020 in our house.

We decided pretty early in the season that we would not be trick-or-treating. With coronavirus cases in our area, we didn’t feel comfortable having our kids go up to houses. With the chance that the person opening the door would not wear a mask (even though we would be masked), it seemed too risky. We explained this to our kids, and they were disappointed.

To help get over the disappointment, we tried to find other ways to celebrate. I got some of those foam graves for the front yard, as well as plastic skeletons, to “come out of the ground” and spiderwebs to cover our bushes.

We came up with an indoor plan for trick-or-treating. Each person got a budget of $25 to decorate one room in the house and buy candy. We then “trick-or-treated” each other’s rooms. I took videos of the completed rooms and posted them on Facebook, inviting friends to vote for their favorite. The kids had a blast and still got a variety of candy.

The weekend after, the Halloween decorations came down. But the Christmas decorations are not going up.