Halloween is by far the biggest holiday in Sedona. Residents and visitors typically celebrate the holiday with parties, concerts and trick-or-treating all over the city.
However, with restrictions placed on bars and venues by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey due to COVID-19, general reluctance and apprehension around attending large gatherings compounded by the unwillingness of local governments to even try to implement any coronavirus mitigation efforts into celebratory events, Halloween this year will be an echo of itself — just another day in autumn.
So many Halloween events and activities have been canceled but this cannot kill the spirit of Sedona and Verde Valley residents who love the holiday.
Thus, we are asking residents to get dressed up anyway and send us a photo of yourself, your family, your roommates or your friends in costume between now and Halloween and we will publish the photos in an upcoming edition.
Make sure the photo is at least 1MB or larger and email them to editor@larsonnewspapers.com. You can include your names if you want to be identified. If it’s not quite clear what your costume is, be sure to include a short description.
Halloween has a long and glorious history in the Verde Valley, from Uptown’s Safe & Fun Trick or Treat to the legendary Jerome Halloween parties at the Asylum and massive costume ball at Spook Hall, trick-or-treating around the gazebo in Clarkdale and in some of the quaint neighborhoods of the city, and concerts by Yin Yang & Zen Some and later the Naughty Bits, which seemingly brought out the entirety of Sedona for a night of drinks and dancing.
For the last 33 years, merchants in Uptown Sedona hosted an annual trick-or-treating event at their storefronts.
The Safe & Fun Trick or Treat pulled Sedona children out of their unlit residential neighborhoods, where many homes are far apart, or set back from the road, up long driveways or unoccupied second homes, to Uptown, where they shuffled from storefront to storefront and came home with a legendary haul after an hour.
For more than 20 years, the event was hosted by the Sedona Main Street Program, a nonprofit business alliance of Uptown merchants that ran all Uptown events from the St. Patrick’s Parade to National Day of the Cowboy shootouts and Moonlight Madness in the fall.
SMSP invited residents to bring their children to the shops in Uptown where they could receive candy from the merchants who stayed open late while also enjoying musical performances at two locations and various costume contests, run by both city officials and local businesses. SMSP sunsetted itself in 2017 and turned over the running of the events to the city of Sedona Parks & Recreation Department.
This year, the Parks & Recreation Department backed out of doing anything, so the city’s portion of the event has been effectively canceled. Ducey’s order allows local governments to waive his limits if they impose rules to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but slapping the ol’ red “cancel” label on an event is just far easier. Some merchants will be hosting informal trick-or-treating at their shops for those residents and visitors who do venture out.
With all these events either canceled, hobbled or heavily modified, children likely won’t be out on the streets. Residents without children who enjoy dressing up on Halloween while not collecting one piece of candy won’t be able to enjoy the wondrous creativity that exists in their neighbors.
Thus we are encouraging our readers to get dressed up anyway. Between now and Halloween, take a photo in your costume by yourself or with friends or family and send them to us for publication.
We hope that next year we can return to the streets and storefronts and see these costumes in person, but for now, this will have to do.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
