Welcome to Garbage Time

Let's embrace the final phase of a very long year for exactly what it is

This past weekend felt like a milestone in this often-shapeless year.

I’ll confess: I was completely surprised by how Halloween went. As a parent of two young children who talk about what they’re going to dress up as for Halloween literally year-round, I spent much of the past month trying to tamp down expectations for a holiday that I quite reasonably assumed would be—as pretty much every other holiday this year has been—a pale imitation of its normal self. I feared that my children would be crushed to see one of their favorite days of the year fall by the wayside as neighbors wisely kept their doors shut to avoid the rapidly-worsening spread of this virus. I even spent a moderate amount of time and effort setting up a candy scavenger hunt in our backyard, assuming that would have to stand in place of Trick-or-Treating.

Much to my surprise, though, Halloween? It ruled. It was a shocking success, an unqualified victory in a year where those have been exceedingly hard to find. With no or…