Planning for the Covid Holidays

Our tradition of Friday night dinners was the first casualty of Covid life. Next, the few backyard lunches we managed to host before the grandkids started back to school.

Now the holidays are in jeopardy.

This season is my happy time. I love creating festive table settings, cooking special meals, and decorating the house. So I’m planning ahead to salvage some family traditions.

Not everyone will be sheltering in place, I know. If your holidays are going on as normal, and you’re planning a family trip or a traditional Thanksgiving get-together, here’s some helpful advice from WebMD. And more guidance from the CDC .

The Remote Party

For the rest of us–and for those who are simply too geographically distanced to be together–a little innovative thinking is in order. Here’s how we celebrated our grandchildren’s birthdays this year:

• We planned a time to meet on FaceTime.
• I created a game or activity we could do together, because there has to be something more than just singing happy birthday and eating cake.
• We dropped off our gifts and received birthday cupcakes in return.
• We played the game, sang happy birthday, ate cake together, then watched remotely as the birthday child opened presents.

It’s not ideal, of course, but it also seemed remarkably inclusive and we felt as though we had joined the party in person.

Our Covid Holiday Plan

For Thanksgiving, each family will make some sides and roast their own small turkey. We’ll swap sides in advance and sit down together at the appointed time to eat dinner over zoom.

Afterwards, we’ll play a guessing game using photographs of the family to draw us together and evoke shared memories. (More when I develop the game, on a future post.)

Shop Ahead

Our Thanksgiving menu has evolved over the years and includes cornbread stuffing, roasted cranberry sauce, potatoes au gratin, and two kinds of pie.

A master shopping list resides on my computer. The ingredients are color-coded by dish, so we can easily eliminate any dish and the groceries needed for it, to substitute new dishes, at any time.

Steve, who does the shopping, always buys the staples well ahead, picking up the perishables closer to the day. This avoids crowds, traffic congestion, and long checkout lines–NOT what you want to deal with for a Covid holiday.

We’ll be shopping for Christmas presents early, too, anticipating potential shipping issues and the possibility that a new wave of Covid could paralyze the manufacturing and distribution of goods. While unlikely, why not just get it all done now so you can relax later? And, it guarantees that the grandkids won’t be disappointed.

Deck the Halls

For Covid holidays, it’s more important than ever to decorate as usual, even if nothing seems the same and your friends and family might not be able to visit. It’s one of the activities in your control.

• I’ll carve a pumpkin for Halloween and gather decorative gourds for my table. I’m sending over treats for the kids, since they won’t be trick-or-treating.
• Just before the lockdown, my neighbors had strung white lights on their trees. Just looking at them lifts my spirits. If you’re not into holiday decorating, consider stringing some inexpensive lights around the house–they’re magical.
• We are putting up an artificial tree for the first time this year to avoid crowded Christmas tree lots. Plus, we won’t have to ask one of our sons to help us haul a massive tree into the house.

What We’ll Miss

There are so many holiday traditions we’ll have to skip this year, due to Covid social distancing.

• Cookie baking with the grandkids.
• Our annual Christmas photo session, done without fail each year, for decades.

• Christmas Eve dinner together.
• Opening Christmas presents at our house on Christmas morning–but only after breakfasting on my Swedish Christmas bread. After a leisurely day, with everyone playing with their new toys, we sit down to dinner together on Christmas night.

Or Maybe Not Quite…

Here are some thought on how we can salvage those traditions:

• The kids and I could bake together via iPad, as we did during Camp Grandma this summer. Miss T can read the recipe and is handy in the kitchen, so she’ll need minor supervision that I can give her online, and we can bake in tandem.
• Instead of all of us taking pictures together, we could each take pictures on the same night to record our Covid holiday.
• We can do for Christmas Eve dinner what we plan to do for Thanksgiving, and possibly play charades afterwards.
• I can send over a loaf of our Christmas bread (recipe make two, anyway) and we can watch the kids open their presents remotely.

Not the same…but still together!

Giving

More people will be hurting financially than ever, during these Covid holidays, so give generously to various groups, if you can:

• Toys for Tots and other foundations that distribute toys to children in need. We give to the local firefighters’ toy program each year.
• Foundations that provide food for the hungry–especially those that prepare holiday meals, such as St. Anthony’s in San Francisco. With few or no volunteers this year, they will be hard-pressed to do their good work.
• Your local food bank or an organization like World Central Kitchen that acts as food first responders during disasters and provides meals for COVID relief under the direction of renowned chef José Andrés.

The holidays will be different this year, but we have so much to be thankful for. And with technology, we can be together, even while apart.

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