Holidays in the time of COVID

I’m curious whether COVID has changed anyone’s holiday plans (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or whatever you traditionally celebrate near the end of the year). We’re still trying to figure out what to do. If you usually get together with family, do you plan to do the same this year, or have you come up with alternate plans?
(Please try to steer away from debates about masks – there are other threads for that. :wink: )

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We will probably still visit family with few precautions other than making sure no one is visibly ill. Will avoid crowds, shopping, etc. Looks like an Amazon Christmas.
The only other option would be to hunker down.

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We’ve thought about doing it that way… but are also considering gathering family by family rather than throwing all 25 of us into one house. We’ll see… but I’m definitely not that keen on the mall either. Probably won’t be photos with Santa this year…

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Speaking of Santa, Jimmy Fallon had a funny segment on Santa in the mall the other night. They had Santa behind plexiglass, and you were talking to him like you were visiting him in prison with the phone thing, and touching the glass on each side. “We’ll get you out of here by Christmas, Santa.”

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Speaking of Halloween or other holidays I think people can make adjustments depending on the density of cases in their are. These things are helpful for me:

This being said, I am planning to see some family on both holidays. It will be relatively safe if we individually commit to low risk activities in the weeks leading up to meeting.

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My parents were going to come visit us in Mexico for New Year’s but that is almost certainly cancelled at this point. We normally get together with a large group of other ex-pats to do a big Christmas dinner, but the traditional host couple was evacuated and is in the States indefinitely. We don’t know yet if we’ll try to make plans with some of the families who are still around or just do something on our own this year.

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My plans did not change. When the original talk of covid came about there was talks about waxing and waning on strictness. A give and a take between precautions and isolation with engaging with others and being social. I was very strict for a little over half the year to where I was not even going out to eat because of having to use debit card. After jan 10th I’ll go back to being more strict.

But for Halloween me and about 20 others are all going on a bike ride around 6pm looking at decorations until just under 8 pm. Then we will all head to our homes and to each other’s homes to shower and then about 10 of us are meeting up at a park at 9pm to watch a few horror movies at a friends house and eat pizza. Then every week one night a week we are meeting up ad watching the new episodes of Higurashi together to fellowship and hang out.

The week before thanksgiving me and almost the same group of people and several more are going to a fall party at a bar where we already rented out one of the rooms. We drink but don’t get drunk. Like 1 -2 shots or a drink each. Behind the bar snd part of the same place we are thin playing mini golf.

For Christmas me and several others are going on a night time hike , give or take a few days around the 25th and camping.

On the tenth of Jan a friend of mine who owns a small theater is working on getting his hands on some various horror movies or something. I’m not really sure. It’s being catered by a local Asian restaurant that has great vegan sushi and pan Asian meals. One room is being set aside for me snd several friends and family and acquaintances and we will enjoy a few movies.

Throughout this time I’ll be going to various family gatherings because it’s a social expectation. Plus it’s some of the few times I see some of my cousins who live several hours away.

That’s helpful information – thanks. We’re in a green county, but our local trick-or-treating festival has already been canceled. So I’ve been trying to figure out if there are other things we can do. It’s too rural for door-to-door stuff anyway.

Boy, I have no idea. I don’t imagine we’ll be able to host anything indoors and even here, outdoors doesn’t make sense in late November or December. We often pass the phone around at Thanksgiving and Christmas to talk to relatives unable to travel that year. Maybe we’ll do a zoom on the actual holiday and plan to have a catch-up holiday once this mess is over.

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Sounds like you need a good nighttime garden area. Have a small patio with heated concrete with a fire pit in it. I seen a really cool one years ago in Washington state where a guy had a 20x20 sunken patio that went down 5 feet and had a space heater set up with a concrete wall on one end with like a 6 foot overhead with a outdoor tv. It could be 40°f outside and inside of it felt like 70°f plus they had outlets with heated blankets. Had a concrete retaining wall built along one one side with dozens of flowers for a night garden.

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We usually get together with my parents, and I’m guessing we’ll still do that. I’m around them every week anyway, since I get their groceries each week.

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We’ll probably have one son home, since he’s planning on staying here for about six weeks. And we’ll probably see our other son and his girlfriend, who live locally, in a socially distanced sort of way. Apart from that, just zoom calls. Transmission is steadily rising in Massachusetts and we’re restricting our exposure more – after a mammoth grocery shopping trip a week ago, we’ll probably avoid even that for an extended period.

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We’re likely going to walk with the kids up and down the street, and our trick or treat station will likely be at the end of our driveway. Thanksgiving isn’t decided because it’s a family birthday time of sorts. Our limited invitations to join us weren’t accepted, so I told my husband he could visit our family, who all live about 6 hours away, by himself for the weekend. Christmas will be in our home with us and our kids. My husband is in the military, so we’ve already had to spend most holidays like this, so that’s been a load we don’t have to carry. We were excited to finally be a half day’s drive to our family in our current place, but it’s not really working out to take advantage of! Hope means a little something more this year :slight_smile:

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