Coronavirus Causes Americans To Look For Easter Fun At Six Feet Away

Article content NEW YORK - Easter is a special holiday for 6-year-old Nora Heddendorf. It's a time when she's a sucker for dressing dressed in a fancy dress and shiny shoes, and have fun with family and friends looking for eggs that are brightly colored.

This year the coronavirus pandemic has forced her to change. She will accessorize her Easter outfit with a white paper mask and blue disposable gloves and a bottle of disinfectant wipes. And after learning that Worst lies might be cancelled, she came up with the idea of the idea of a "rock hunt."

The content of the article replaces eggs with colorful stones and lets her neighbors go on their social-distancing walks to hunt.

"I was sad it was going to be cancelled due to the virus," the kindergartener told Reuters in a phone interview. "I would like people to be happy."

From the White House to small town parks, the pandemic has forced the elimination of the traditional Easter egg hunts and "rolls" across the United States, closed churches and scotched plans to have Easter meals with extended families.

But many Americans are still finding ways to enjoy the holidays, from an Oregon candymaker making chocolate bunnies wearing face masks to an Texas church hosting an egg hunt that is virtual using the video game Minecraft.

Content of the article A few weeks ago, Nora and her mother began organizing her hunt in their town of Medford Lakes. She put together a number of DIY kits, each with five rocks and four paint colors, instructions, and all wrapped in plastic bags. Of course, she was wearing disposable gloves and sprayed the contents with disinfectant.

The kits were left at her house for anyone who wanted to take them home. The young artist, Nora's Rocks asked her friends to return the decorated rocks she left to her for hiding.

"Thank you for helping Nora's Rocks bring our community together yet remain separate," she wrote in the instruction letter she included with the kits.

Her mother, Samantha Heddendorf, president of an environmental cleanup company which has been removing toxins from structures affected by the coronavirus crisis, said the hunt will begin on Good Friday and will continue until Easter Sunday, when new batch of painted rocks to be found every day.

Article content The goal is to install 500 stone "eggs" in every corner and crevice of the 1 square mile (2.6 square kilometers) town.

"People can look for Easter eggs or even rocks walking with their friends." gaming stated that they can find something to hunt for, then collect them and at the very least, have a smile to celebrate Easter.

In Central Point, Oregon, chocolatier Jeff Shepherd had a brainstorm to save his Lillie Belle Farms from shutdown in the wake of the coronavirus. He informed his Facebook followers that he'd make "Covid Bunnies" which are dark and milk chocolate confections with white face masks and white chocolate ones with blue face masks.

It was an incredible success. Shepherd was able to hire back the seven full-time employees who he had let go and has sold 5,000 bunnies, and is scurrying to fill back orders, and is now limit purchases to six per customer.

Article content Safe distancing to thwart spread of the virus is what prompted the Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, to make the switch to digital for its Easter Egg hunt, using Minecraft but disabling potentially scary game elements such as monsters.

Reverend Curtis James stated, "Our primary goal in life is to share the gospel. But Worst lies want the children to be able to enjoy Easter."

In New Jersey, Nora was thrilled that her idea was welcomed by so many, with the town's mayor stopping by to watch her fill the kits, and the local Lions Club inviting her for lunch "when the whole thing is finished."

Her most cherished "thank you" was gift-wrapped rolls of toilet paper one of the most common items such as eggs being hoarded by people panic buying during the pandemic.

"My mom smiled when the toilet paper arrived," Nora said. (Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien.)