Staying home for the holidays during Covid-19

Every year, I spend my Thanksgiving holiday with my family in South Carolina.

It’s a tiring and unamusing 10-hour trek by car, yet I do it because it’s the easiest time to get down there to see everyone, and nothing can quite beat the shenanigans that go on in my sister’s kitchen when we all get together to cook.

It’s a time that I simultaneously wish could be recorded and broadcast to all ends of the earth and yet am grateful no one beyond her house ever has the chance to witness it. It’s a pretty good time and it’s inevitable that one of my nephews is going to say something kooky and memorable, as young boys often do.

This year, however, will be different. With the holidays rapidly approaching and COVID-19 showing no signs of leaving the scene in the foreseeable future, I and a lot of other folks are faced with having to make some tough decisions about how we are handling this year’s holiday get-togethers.

I am fortunate that I am able to work from home, so a 14-day quarantine to be sure I’m not exposed to the virus is fairly easy. However, for my sister and her husband, who must still spend a few days a week in their offices, it’s not.

The same goes for thousands of other Americans who simply do not have a choice and must be in public and therefore potentially in the presence of the coronavirus at any given moment.

Another complication that I have personally faced is in having family members recently test positive for Covid-19. Four in my immediate family, to be exact. At this point, two have fully recovered, one is slower to bounce back, and one has died.

I suppose it is easy for some who have not experienced the Covid-related death of a family member—or even a close friend—to shrug off the idea of social distancing during the holidays. I can and already have heard it among my circles: “We’ll just wear masks and keep 6 feet apart.” I don’t know about you and yours, but my family is all about hugging, and unless you plan to bring your assigned green bean casserole ready-made to the feast, it’s always close quarters in the kitchen.

I know how my family is, and I know what we’ve already been through. The idea of losing one Thanksgiving with my remaining family sure sounds more bearable than the prospect of any one of us losing out on the rest of them.

“What are we supposed to do? How do we handle the holidays?” I’ve been reading this a lot on social media. I can’t make that call for anyone, I can only encourage being overly cautious. But who really has this option? Who ever does all of their holiday food shopping without forgetting one thing that they have to go back to the store for? Not me. There is always something, and I cannot imagine a bag of cranberries being worth the life of a loved one.

Maybe this is an overboard approach. Maybe nothing would actually happen if I changed my mind and decided to make the trip. Maybe everyone will be smart about how they do things this holiday season, and maybe everyone will be safe. That’s a lot of maybes.

With the cancellation or—at best—postponement of concerts, movie releases, comic cons, weddings, and a slew of other events we’ve been looking forward to, including holidays, if there’s one thing 2020 has taught us, it is that this is a year of slowing down, of introspection, and of sacrifice.