The holidays are going to look and feel different this year. Oooof. After the first dozen or so times I heard this, even a thick-headed dumbass track coach like me got it. Do we need to keep HEARING this? Or talking about the “new normal” already? Double oooof! In talking with two loyal alums (via Zoom, of course) last night, they posited that Christmastime would pose more of a pandemic threat than Thanksgiving. I get what they said and they could in fact be accurate in that assessment, but I think Thanksgiving may be more pervasively problematic. Here’s my point: Pretty much everyone celebrates Thanksgiving, and travel centered around this holiday might be more widespread than any other. And since this is the holiday staring us in the face right now, let’s talk about it.
There is so much chatter and information out there about Covid-19, but I’d like to think there is one thing we can all agree upon: Indoor gatherings, in enclosed spaces, for longer than brief visits, without masks, crowded together, sharing food and drink and talking and laughing and hugging and kissing – phew, that’s quite a potent concoction for the spread of a highly infectious virus. Most years, that previous run-on sentence would be a good way of describing the risks – relatively minor that they are – of colds and flu spreading during holidays like Thanksgiving (my childhood memory is filled with grown Italian men snorting and sneezing violently into a handkerchief and then neatly folding it and putting it back into their pockets for future use… disgusting!) As we hopefully all know by now, Covid-19 is not the cold and it is not the flu. Same concept, far more serious consequences. The anti-mask folks often crow and whine about being told to wear face coverings: “Don’t tell me what to do, how to live my life, etc.” When officials wag their collective fingers at us and implore us to forego our usual, big Thanksgiving gatherings, that anti-mask credo rings in many of our heads. “Come on, man, we gotta live, family time is sacred, enough of this crap.” I get it. I get it. We all get it.
And yet? We gotta be careful, people. Is it worth it? Is it worth gathering in large groups inside -- eating together, talking, laughing, hugging and kissing -- not knowing for sure where everyone has been, who they’ve been exposed to? We’ve also had to “embrace the suck” for the past 8.5 months. What’s another day, another few months? The year 2020 has been different in so many ways; isn’t it fitting that Thanksgiving, the holidays, should be different too? Shouldn’t we be big boys and girls and adjust and adapt? Maybe we can embrace the differences, create new solutions (no, not “new normals” because this cannot and will not be the norm long-term!) and look back and say, “yeah, that sucked, but wasn’t it fun and interesting and different in 2020 when we ______ (fill in the blank).”
So many “didn’ts” this year. We didn’t have an outdoor track season; graduations of all sorts; road races; preseason; cross country season; a fully functioning fall semester; other than on a screen, I haven’t seen family members in New Jersey pretty much for the balance of 2020, probably a similar story rings true for many of you reading this. In many ways, it all has sucked. But here we are, at Thanksgiving 2020. A time to reflect on gratitude. Not easy, this year. Sometimes the “not easy” is more gratifying, more worthwhile, in the long run (think: marathon training and racing). So, as you gather (or maybe not gather), at a smaller table with fewer people around you, try swimming upstream and, instead of ruminating upon the many didn’ts of 2020, try making a gratitude list. Might be a lot more difficult, when you’d probably much rather be gathering for holiday cheer and maybe even doing a Turkey Trot road race. But anyway. Try it. Even in 2020, my hope, desire and prayer is that you – we all -- can do that, and the list is longer than you had thought it would be. Happy Thanksgiving.
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