How do you really feel about COVID-19? Channel all that pent up emotion and consider releasing it on a piñata. That is, indeed, what your fellow Americans are doing.
It seems like more and more people are using the cathartic exercise to pass the time and manifest their thoughts about the global quarantine period in physically satisfying ways. The game seems to be serving a dual function: on the one hand, it's been helping people get rid of their frustrations. On the other hand, it's been used as a tool to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and more.
Most of the piñatas we've been noticing on social media are reminiscent of the image that has been dominating our visual fields in the last few months: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's illustration of the coronavirus. The image—a gray ball of stuff covered in red triangle-shaped spikes of different stuff—was developed by Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgings, illustrators that work at the agency who were tasked with creating "an identity for the virus" back in January.
So widespread has been the piñata "movement" that the New York Times even wrote a feature about it, interviewing a few coronavirus piñata makers about their experiences. Rachel Yoder, a novelist in Iowa, told the paper that she made a piñata using a balloon and newspaper to celebrate her husband's birthday, for example. Her friend Jen Percy, a journalist in Brooklyn, New York, "created a 'coroñata' for her boyfriend's birthday" while Jocelyn Warren, a public health administrator in Oregon, is looking ahead, hoping to smash her creation once the virus is actually over.
If you want to join in on the fun but aren't too crafty, worry not. A simple search for "coronavirus piñata" on Amazon yields a slew of hilarious and smash-worthy results. While you wait for your order, check out some of the piñatas that people have posted on Instagram: