WASHINGTON, DC — The US Department of Holidays, which is real, issued a rare statement today, in which it took the shocking move of cancelling the Halloween holiday, citing the increased risk of the Covid-19 pandemic and “because we just now realized we could”.

Halloween, typically observed on the last day of October, is a favorite of many Americans, and the impact of this decision will be felt throughout the rest of the month. The DOH statement added some further rationale for their decision: “you idiots can’t go unsupervised for twenty goddamn minutes without having another super-spreader event, so we can’t justify the risk of you running door to door with your unwashed kids during the middle of all this.”

“Plus,” the statement continued, “we’ve been seeing a lot of misleading and confused posts on social media about whether the government has the authority to cancel a holiday. Well, we do, and we are.”

“Fucked around, found out.” the statement added. “Lol.”

In detailing the consequences for anyone caught breaking this order, the statement had only this to say: “seriously, if we catch you celebrating Halloween, you’re going to super-guantanamo. That’s the second, worse, Guantanamo that Obama had built under the first one and – look, listen, just don’t do Halloween this year, please? Literally think of the children, for once.”

In an interesting loophole, adults without children and parents of children who aren’t of a trick-or-treating age aren’t bound by this new guidance, and can proceed with whatever holiday event or activity they had planned.

According to the DOH guidelines: “those people aren’t technically celebrating Halloween, they’re just sad weird losers. Go ahead and keep talking about how much you like horror movies until you get a grown-up hobby.”

Reporter Lincoln Freimund contributed to this article.