Our first year in Coronaville is coming to an end. The virus has affected all major holidays since March, so why should Christmas be any different? We weren’t even able to squeeze in St. Patricks’s Day because Governor Beshear shut down the bars and restaurants on March 16.
Then, when we did try to celebrate Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day, we just created new surges and “super spreader events.” Halloween was mostly cancelled and then Thanksgiving travel really caused an uptick in COVID cases.
So by now, most of us have learned our lesson. Most folks I know will be “home alone” this holiday, but that will not keep us from celebrating and gift-giving to mark the birth of Jesus and his later-day capitalist companion Santa Claus.
For example, here is my family’s Christmas plan. Last weekend, Deanna and I drove our carload of gifts for our children and grandchildren to the Beaver Dam service area on the West Kentucky Parkway. There, fully masked, we met our children and their families. One family drove “down” from Danville to meet us while the other came from Louisville. Each of us put our gifts in appropriately marked family boxes in the parking lot. Then each family reloaded them into their vehicles for the trip back home.
Before leaving we visited each other from our socially-distanced cars with the windows open, masks at the ready in case anyone had to exit their vehicle for any reason.
Touching gift exchange, right?
On Christmas eve or Christmas day, some of us will attend religious services on Zoom, light a candle, and say a quick prayer before sitting down to eat our take-out turkey, ham or goose with a glass of wine (to replace the caroling or wassailing we might have done in earlier years). At some point, we will open the gifts that bounded around in our cars on the trip back to our respective homes from Beaver Dam. We also plan to visit with “the kids” via Zoom or Facetime.
And that will be our COVID Christmas. No too bad, all things considered.
It could be much worse. We could be fighting the chill or heat, wind or rain in a refugee camp somewhere on our pandemic planet. We could be hungry (whoops, “food insecure”) like many of our fellow Americans and millions elsewhere in our world. We could be unemployed or mourning a family death at Christmas. We could be waiting eagerly for a stimulus check to pay next month’s rent.
However, many of the people in our circle of friends (older, retired, with pensions or social security) are fortunate not to be facing the sufferings of many of our fellow citizens during this COVID-caused recession. Most of us know people, even friends or relatives, who have suffered or died from COVID, but we follow CDC protocols, wear our masks outside, and expect to be vaccinated in a month or two. Therefore, we remain cautious but not panicked in Coronaville.
The fact is that many Americans in the middle and upper classes will be able to have a reasonably happy COVID Christmas, despite the inconvenience and loneliness of this year. The same is not true of the many citizens who face this holiday out of work, food, housing or hope.
Our COVID experience is bringing significant changes to American social and political life. We
can be pretty sure that there will be soon be big changes in how our Nursing Homes and elder care facilities are operated. The baby boomers will demand to be kept safer and treated better than has been the case with their parents.
We will also become more accustomed to digital communication, will continue to buy more online, work from home where possible and have flexible work schedules and perhaps even better pay if we do have to work “out in the world,” and many poorer service workers must do.
Would it be too much to expect that Americans might emerge from this crisis just a bit more committed to income equality and to fair treatment of minorities, immigrants, foreigners, and “the least among us”? If we could manage this, more of us could have a happy holiday, COVID or no COVID.