No, your usual Easter egg hunt isn’t safe this year. But there are creative alternatives.
The Easter egg hunt is a beloved tradition, but Triangle police are warning residents that it is not safe to conduct a hunt this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Towns and churches have canceled their annual events, but the Apex police department said it “received some concern” about groups still planning to carry on the tradition this weekend to celebrate the Easter holiday.
Wake County Emergency Management officials said having an Easter egg hunt at a business or in a subdivision violates the county order against mass gatherings, according to Apex police.
The department asked residents to help be part of the solution and to follow the county guidelines, as well as North Carolina’s stay-at-home orders that limit social gatherings to 10 people.
Egg hunt alternatives
Some neighborhoods are keeping the Easter egg hunt tradition alive while practicing social distancing.
Jen Schrage said the Five Points neighborhood has hosted an annual egg hunt in a local park or grassy area for decades.
“It kind of leaves a hole in your heart to say we can’t do this this year,” Schrage said.
But she saw an opportunity to make alternative plans, organizing a modified egg hunt for families to make and search for eggs every day while walking around the Five Points neighborhood.
“This gives kids some sort of normalcy in this time of uncertainty,” Schrage said. “It gives [families] something to look forward to, because a lot of our calendars are now empty of activities.”
Parents can print out a full page-size patterned egg for kids to cut out and color. They hang those colored eggs on their front doors, windows, fences and trees in the yard for other families to spot, but not touch. Houses on more than 50 streets are part of the hunt. Schrage encouraged parents to incentivize kids with a piece of candy for every egg they see.
Hundreds of families were invited to join the event, which started on April 1 and runs through Easter Sunday on April 12.
Susannah Palmer’s sons Arlo, 5, and Oscar, 2, colored eggs to put up on the door and in a bedroom window. They’ve been looking for bears and other stuffed animals in neighbors’ windows on their daily walks. Now the kids are counting how many eggs they’ve found.
“Right now, we’re all looking for things to keep our kids learning and having fun,” Palmer said. “It’s definitely a good form of entertainment and something that each night we’re all sitting down to dinner and we talk about what we saw today on our walks.”
Getting out of the house with the kids has also allowed the family to meet a lot of new neighbors, at a very safe distance, Palmer said, which helps keep the sense of community during the pandemic.
Palmer said they usually attend an Easter egg hunt put on by the real estate company The Glenwood Agency. The event was canceled but the agency left baskets with filled eggs on residents doorsteps so that the kids could have their own egg hunts safely at home, Palmer said.
The Parkside Place Apartment complex in Cary is also delivering pre-stuffed eggs to residents, after canceling its annual hunt, so families can celebrate the holiday at home.
And Brier Creek Country Club canceled its Easter events but is bringing the egg hunt to residents’ houses. Families’ can sign up to have staff members scatter eggs on front lawns before sunrise to surprise children with an at-home egg hunt on Sunday morning.
Restoring a sense of normalcy
Mandy Becker and her 8-year-old daughter, Kennedy, had a similar idea for families walking around Fallon Park in Raleigh.
They painted 12 rocks to look like Easter eggs, plus a golden egg, and hide them in the park every day.
They put up signs and made a Facebook group telling people to take pictures with the eggs when they find them and send the photos to Becker to be entered in a drawing on Easter for a Goodberry’s Frozen Custard gift card.
Dozens of parents and their children, from toddlers to 22-year-olds, have sent photos to Becker over the past week. Kennedy, her friends and their siblings aren’t in school, but they’ve gone out to the park together while staying six feet apart.
“My intention behind it was just an act of kindness, a fun something to do for all these little kids that their life has changed so drastically,” Becker said. “It’s just a little slice of normal life that you’re hunting for eggs.”
A big Easter egg hunt was a yearly tradition for Ali Standish, the only holiday her entire family would get together, so she couldn’t imagine the kids on her block going sitting in the house on Sunday with empty baskets.
Standish had her husband create a mock newspaper flyer that the Easter Bunny had arrived in Raleigh and posted them on poles throughout their Oakwood neighborhood on East Franklin Street.
Standish hid a few dozen paper stand-up eggs throughout the neighborhood for children to locate throughout the week. When they find the eggs, they won’t pick them up, they will return home and respond to an email, letting Standish know where and which egg they located. She will then send out prizes to the children.
“I’ve heard a couple of kids going by and counting,” Standish said. “That’s very exciting. It evokes a lot of the same joy that I had during Easter egg hunts.”
Bringing some sense of normalcy back to the children in the neighborhood this week was the main goal for Standish.
“I think those anchors are really important for us right now,” Standish said. “To keep us connected to the way that life used to be. There’s a joy that comes with finding an Easter egg that makes you really happy. We have to look for those opportunities among all the chaos.”
