Boo Baskets Are Haunting Parents

When I was growing up, my dad would go all out for Valentine’s Day for me and my four siblings: a pancake breakfast, each plate hosting some combination of a little teddy bear holding a heart, a foil-wrapped chocolate rose, a Hallmark card, among other trinkets. My dad was not, by today’s standards — or even then, really — what people would call an OTT (over the top) parent. Sometimes, it was clear the teddy bear had been repurposed from last year’s forgotten yield. Sometimes, the card had the part someone else had written on cut off. But it was his thing, he loved doing it, and to a kid who was in no way deprived but not, on our family’s raising-five-kids budget, spoiled, it felt pretty darn special.

Parenting has changed a lot in 30 years, though, and as I’ve come to develop my own holiday traditions for my two children, I’ve had some reservations. Something like fancy Valentine’s breakfasts — what felt then like a private, authentically motivated act of holiday goodness — when refracted through the fun-house mirror of modern parenting now smacks of performance, perfectionism, and careless consumerism. Is it no longer possible, I wonder, to experience that sweet “treat your kids” moment without the intrusion of the digital gaze?

Which brings us, naturally, to the “boo basket” — a collection of treats and trinkets that is Halloween’s answer to the Christmas stocking — which you’ve probably seen cropping up on your various feeds, especially if you follow any momfluencers. As Cut columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton wrote earlier this month, boo baskets appear to have started as a kind of spooky Secret Santa. You sneakily leave on a neighbor’s doorstep a small basket or bucket filled with candy and the sort of plastic toys and trinkets (i.e., junk) you find in the CVS seasonal aisle, then they leave one at another neighbor’s door (as one Reddit commenter noted, the proliferation of Ring cameras has probably ruined some of the fun). The trend became the gift-giving equivalent of a couples costume: Scroll through your Explore feed or FYP right now and you’ll see a flurry of posts with suggestions for what your husband or BF can put into your boo basket this year (gua sha tools don’t scream spooky or cozy to me, but what do I know?). An endless stream of these videos star mostly women showing off this year’s yield and encouraging the guys out there (though we assume mostly women are watching) to boo up. In one TikTok unboxing video, the poster pulls out something called an “adoptable ghost”; her boyfriend chimes in to say, “I thought it was useless, so I had to get it.” Naturally.

But now, boo baskets have reached their evolutionary boss level as yet another way for parents to turn up the volume on the magic of childhood by buying stuff and posting about it. Many, supposedly, present the basket on the first of October as sort of a hype creator for the season: Do a quick search and you can find countless kids posing happily with jack-o’-lantern–painted plastic tubs full of Halloween Mad Libs and mummy Squishables, or teens with their tasteful wicker baskets of plush orange-and-brown blankets and pumpkin-scented face masks. They can be a cousin to the Switch Witch, a mythical being whom parents attribute with switching their child’s candy for nonedible toys and trinkets, or they can be more like a sweets-filled Easter basket. One blog offers 20 different ideas for boo-basket themes, complete with tutorials.

Reading some of the comments on the Reddit threads and Facebook groups where the contents or validity of boo baskets is being discussed, you would think we were talking politics or participating in a senior seminar on feminist ethics. Some commenters are aghast at the idea of one more parental act (let’s be honest, maternal act), which, of course, as most things child-related do these days, involves buying a bunch of crap (“Utterly needless consumerism!” fumed a Reddit-head). In one heated discussion, someone chirped, “Again I’m thrilled to not be parenting small children in this era.” In this light, the practice is a reminder of how we have become accustomed as parents (again, read: mothers) to maximizing every childhood moment and signaling to others that we have done so. It’s hard to find the joy in that.

Others want to be left alone to enjoy their OTT ways. What if you just love Halloween or come from, as one Reddit poster said, “a very spooky family”? Kids are only young once; next year, they’ll be having sex and growing facial hair and won’t give a damn about jack-o’-lantern pajamas. After all, care is a sacred act, and if filling spider-shaped bags with popcorn for your little ones feels sacred to you, who are we to judge?

Like most debates about parenting, there are good points on all sides. And the fever pitch isn’t just online shit-stirring. It comes, in my experience, from a place of honest overwhelm about the endless barrage of messages, many of them indeed backed by corporations, that muddle our parenting instincts (this blog post on boo baskets is sponsored by the Mars Corporation, and if you live near Erie, Pennsylvania, the Millcreek Mall will walk you through how to make one there). We’re not not talking politics and feminist ethics here. Isn’t the “theme” of any Boo Basket just unpaid care work?

The part of my father’s parenting brain that prepped for holidays was free from many things mine is not — social-media influencers sharing reels of their happy children, Instagram ads for matching pajamas, the Target Dollar Spot calling to me with its seasonal siren song of absolute garbage I am momentarily convinced will make my kids feel loved and ameliorate some of the effects of what the ambient soundtrack of the internet tells me is likely terrible parenting.

Where does all this leave us? Back where we’ve always been, as parents. Trying to figure out what matters to us, where the joy is, and what we can cast off because it doesn’t serve us. For us, having actual fun isn’t as simple as making heart-shaped pancakes — it’s sifting the bullshit from the delight. It’s trying to listen to ourselves and our children amid a level of noise that is, I’ll admit, a bit scary.