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So during these troubling times, how are you folks planning to handle the holidays?


Mr. Silly

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The girls are half a country away. We will face time with them. Son will probably come over. Brother is going to Mom’s for Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to go there this year because I kind of used my silver bullet last year. 
Not sure what will happen with in-laws. SIL had Covid a couple week ago. They had been pretty cavalier about it before then. Not sure how they will be now. 

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Big family gatherings went away years ago. I don’t miss them. Probably just me, wife, and son. Like @petitepedal I could skip turkey on Thanksgiving and make something else. But Wo7 is a traditionalist and wants turkey. Last year I made jambalaya in place of stuffing. Maybe I’ll do oysters as an appetizer and cook a turkey breast on a beer can on the Weber. Bracciole for Christmas dinner sounds good too. 

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I'll probably spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her husband.  My other sister may come as well   One or more of her kids may join for Christmas, but I don't expect it will be a "big" gathering.

Petite, could you make just a turkey breast ?   Not good if you like the dark meat, but easier than a full turkey.

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I haven't really thought about it so much, I figure I would let my parents decide what to do.  My mom has severe health issues, and coronavirus would be her end, probably.  That said, it could come anytime anyway, so if they think "why not get together?", then why wouldn't I?  RO and I went last year to Ohio for Christmas, her mother will have her this year.

Kind of a no-win situation, and I am bepuzzled on what to do, what is sensible, and what can be done overall.  :(

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Turkey Day will likely  be a small event rather than joining my mom, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews.  With the kids all back in physical schools, I see no reason to push the limits on germiness, and it will be interesting to see if my 74yr old mom avoids it as well.

Normally, we rent a large house for a long holiday weekend and hit 20+ folks for intense family interactions indoors - games, tv, arguments, eating, with a smattering of outddor time if weather permits - so not really a good idea in 2020.

We then have the family X-mas gathering - ~50 of us with my two uncles families - but with the uncles at the approaching 80 age, it seems also risky for them having folks from VA, NJ, PA, NY, CT, and MA converging together including many college, high school & grade school kids in the mix. Regular x-mas will likely be interesting as well as my FiL (battling cancer) still intends to make the trip from the West Coast to visit us and his other daughters, so we'll have to see where that goes too. :(

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Current plans for Thanksgiving are to meet at the new home of Daughter#3's boyfriend.  He bought a place in the country this summer and has room for us and has offered his place.  I have no idea about Christmas.  So it will be normal crowd of 14 or 15, but all that could change based on COVID.  The local school goes back to a hybrid in class plan next week so Daughter#3 goes back to her teaching job with pre-school and WoKzoo see more kids daily on the school buss.   For the last 2 weeks she has had a bus run of 2 special needs kids am and pm. 2 is much different than 40.

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Your Tgiving is a much bigger deal to you than ours is for us.  Still..., son will come over for the weekend and there is a good chance that D2 and her husband may drive down with my Grandson and stay a week or so to visit.:skipping:

Chistmas will just be us and my son, same as last year.

Other than our 2 daughters living on the Prairies, and our son just across the Strait, the rest of both of our families are in Ontario or out East.

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One member of the extended family, my brother's father-in-law, has a one-floor single home with lots of kitchen-dining-side room to spread out.

We MAY have Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings there, but only if there isn't a big rise in cases this Fall.

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2 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Check your crawl space!!!!!

This is NE, we have full basements.

2 hours ago, Zephyr said:

Your Tgiving is a much bigger deal to you than ours is for us.

 
 

We like to celebrate a day where we "discovered" an inhabited land, killed of many of the indigenous people, and ultimately relegated them to some trivial pieces of land.  

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3 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

This is NE, we have full basements.

We like to celebrate a day where we "discovered" an inhabited land, killed of many of the indigenous people, and ultimately relegated them to some trivial pieces of land.  

P&R

 

#reported

 

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We normally have thanksgiving with my daughters in laws but we have been social distancing so not sure.  The in laws are odd in several ways but they don’t want to be around us, but the kids are fine. Except the kids are with us 2-3 times a week...  Whatever we’ll deal with it. Christmas is generally small anyway, just us for Christmas morning so no changes.  

I don’t normally see my siblings for holidays but a family gathering including my siblings, kids, grandkids, great grandkids can easily hit 50 people and is usually closer to 75 so that ain’t happening.

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No, dearie and I will show each other our thxgiving dinners via video.

It's just reality. 

Planning to be with dearie for Noel times. Yes, it will be a risk to fly.

I haven't seen Toronto folks since fall 2019 and probably can't for next few years with siblings working various hospitals and mom in her 80's. Normally we never go out to Ontario for Christmas anyway. It's just easier on my family members, when I visit them in warmer weather when we all can be more mobile around the city without snow/ice, etc. and do stuff outdoors together, rather than stuck indoors as a guest too long.

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Thanksgiving always starts with getting everyone together at the parade.  That's already cancelled.  Then, back to our house, BiL and his family satay for a couple days, The Black Friday Lizard crawl, Another Thanksgiving Dinner that couldn't be beat.  This year, just our household - 4 if a house can't be purchased by then.  We did just buy a gas fireplace for the deck, on the chance we could get together for a distanced outdoor dinner.

Christmas, 3 Masses Christmas eve, midnight celebration, daughters stop by in the morning, then off to the BiL's for a couple days of celebrating.  Some years, up to Vermont for a few days.  This year, none of it.  And I don't think the fire pit will help.

Sadly, I think we'll be back to an empty church again by Christmas.  Not sure how to handle the music situation for that, should it be as normal as possible with no choir or band, or something completely different?

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Wo46 is retiring in October so we have plans to spend thanksgiving in Georgia with our son.

Since our son moved to Georgia 12 years ago we've only been able to spend thanksgiving together one time because of Wo46's job and not being able to get time off over the holidays. 

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5 hours ago, 12string said:

Thanksgiving always starts with getting everyone together at the parade.  That's already cancelled.  Then, back to our house, BiL and his family satay for a couple days, The Black Friday Lizard crawl, Another Thanksgiving Dinner that couldn't be beat.  This year, just our household - 4 if a house can't be purchased by then.  We did just buy a gas fireplace for the deck, on the chance we could get together for a distanced outdoor dinner.

Christmas, 3 Masses Christmas eve, midnight celebration, daughters stop by in the morning, then off to the BiL's for a couple days of celebrating.  Some years, up to Vermont for a few days.  This year, none of it.  And I don't think the fire pit will help.

Sadly, I think we'll be back to an empty church again by Christmas.  Not sure how to handle the music situation for that, should it be as normal as possible with no choir or band, or something completely different?

There's a lot of music...to pipe over or someone bring in the laptop and turn up audio.

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29 minutes ago, Forum Administrator said:

I'll be honest....  This is going to be a tough holiday.  I miss my mom.  My step-dad has COPD and is in the early stages of lung cancer, so she is very cautious.  I understand it, but I haven't seen her since February.  

I owe my and all sibs' good health foundations....to mother.  She is recovering from cataract surgery. Thankfully she had her heart pacemaker implant done in Dec., just before covid. She is 86. My father died a few yrs. ago.  Each sibling is only visiting directly her...it is risk because they each work in hospitals.

I don't expect visit my mother for at least 2 yrs. or more because of the restrictions.

She has no one else and can't afford cost of personal assistant.

No, she doesn't know my public Internet dedication blog post:  https://cyclewriteblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/judge-not-the-poor-eating-healthy/  She can't read English. ( I don't want anyone to tell me to get rid of mother lst language...for family communication and harmonious relationships, is quite critical .)

Her influence on our family diets' going forward...is actually tremendous.  I see it carried over from my sisters' raising their children.

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  • 1 month later...

My nephew is coming in from Los Vegas for Thanksgiving.  My mother is hosting the Thanksgiving dinner that Saturday night.  The invitees include my mother, my step father, my nephew, my nephew's GF, my aunt, my uncle, Mrs. Silly and me.  That's 8 people in an enclosed area for 3 or 4 hours two of whom flew across the country. 

To complicate the issue, this will probably be the last Thanksgiving for my step father.  

Mrs. Silly tapped out.  When in high school in '83, she had ovarian cancer.  Back then the medicines used in chemo where very aggressive and included heavy metals.  The chemo did permanent damage to her lungs.  She doesn't want to risk getting a respiratory disease. 

I am not at all comfortable going either.  One thing Mrs. Silly said when we were discussing this is, "If there is anything there, you'll bring it home."   She is right.  Like I said at the beginning of this thread, I am not comfortable with large family gatherings.  I leaning toward bowing out as well.  My mother won't be pleased, I can only hope that she'd understand.

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On 9/29/2020 at 3:54 AM, Mr. Silly said:

I don't feel comfortable with big family gatherings.

Thank you for taking this seriously.

We were invited to a small gathering at a friend's home for Thanksgiving.  We regretfully declined. We have been invited to a gathering at another friend's home for Christmas.  We regretfully declined.

Our holidays will be spent at home.  I will make something nice and we will play board games.  

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Even if I invited my whole family, there'd be 7 of us. That said; older sis and hubby are in SC, not coming. Twin sis is busy breaking COVID rules to date new boyfriend. She can infect them on Thanksgiving. We've visiting the grandparents and they us on the regular. Only people we see outside of our house other than grocery/gas so they'll come. 

Christmas we don't want to host family so were thinking of a road trip. Savannah, Charleston, Blowing Rock and then Massanutten for some skiing. But everyplace we've looked at either fully open with minimal restrictions or vague on if they'll actually be open. In the end we decided not to chance it. Shame, but understandable. So at home for the holidays. 

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Good question.  I think 10-15 of us are going to risk a family gathering that large - we haven't done so since the 4th of July.

Each one is assigned and brings dishes to Christmas Dinner.  I guess we'll all trust that to work out ok.  My kielbasa and sauerkraut will be continually heated/kept warm in an Instant Pot, and since that will be higher than 133°F (56°C), no COVID-19 viruses will survive.

We've been doing the Secret Santa pick-a-name-from-a-hat gift in recent years, picking the name at Thanksgiving. Since we're not all going to be together at Thanksgiving, maybe we'll have our chief organizer, my sister-in-law, put the names of all the people participating in a hat, write the names down, and then pick names from the hat to match with the names written down, and then informing each of us secretly by email who we got.

I'll get gifts for my nephews in addition, though giving them money might be the better option this year.

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On 9/29/2020 at 10:11 AM, Razors Edge said:

Regular x-mas will likely be interesting as well as my FiL (battling cancer) still intends to make the trip from the West Coast to visit us and his other daughters, so we'll have to see where that goes too.

This has evolved to us going to CA to see him, with him not fit to travel now, and perhaps (very sadly) ever travel again.  We're getting into the "visit now, while you can, before it is too late" situation, despite him being very optimistic that he is still going to recover.  So, no holiday travel, but travel between Thanksgiving and Christmas is looking very likely.

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44 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

will be continually heated/kept warm in an Instant Pot, and since that will be higher than 133°F (56°C), no COVID-19 viruses will survive.

If you are counting on an Insta Pot save you from Covid in a large gathering you're not looking at it right.

 

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