My neighborhood is the epicenter of trick-or-treating for my whole town, and my house is right at the center of THAT, so we get 600-800 kids most years. I made a big deal of it with spooky synth and theremin music and a big light show on the porch. We’re expecting word today on whether TorT is happening at all this year, but either way, I’m sitting it out. We’re in a pretty significant surge locally and I don’t want to encourage any superspreading.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be very small without the extended family.
We usually travel for NYE, often to New Orleans. Haven’t figured that one out yet.
Of course it’s summer hols down here, we don’t do Halloween nor Thanksgiving.
But have booked a beach house a couple of hours south for a week, and for the first time ever going to eat out for Xmas lunch…on our way to our holiday destination.
I’m not doing Halloween this year for the first time since I’ve had a door to knock on. Thanksgiving at Sis’ has been cancelled. Christmas, we’ll see, but I’m preparing to just stay home and get drunk.
I walked in to work this morning and was ecountered my a maskless non-social distancer who was bragging that last night he attended a bonfire with 70 other fucking assholes.
Just curious: how did you respond? I tend to roll my eyes and shake my head at people like that, but it doesn’t seem like enough, and later I think of all the things I should have said.
I just got off the phone with my mom - 76 years old, chronic respiratory problem. She wanted to know what we’re doing for Thanksgiving, because if we’re not joining her at her house, she’s going up to my uncle’s house to spend the weekend with him and my cousin. Then she told me that my brother is flying all four of his young adult boys home for Christmas. She said she didn’t want to miss seeing them but wondered if it was a good idea…to go stay a few days with four 20 somethings who attend college and/or work, go to the gym, and just stepped off a plane. Um, no, not a good idea. She’ll do what she wants but it all pisses me off. My little family is staying home, no visitors allowed.
Last week during Mistermage’s weekly visit to his parents his mom asked about getting together this week-end to celebrate his and our oldest son’s birthday. She wanted to take us out to eat. He said “Uh, I don’t think Misty will go for that. She’s not interested in dining out right now.”
Then she asked about Thanksgiving. Again, he told her no. She was like “Well, what if you and (the grown) kids come and she stays home?” Not only did he laugh but so did my FIL.
Turkey Day is a NO WAY in HELL because it would involve 3 families from 3 different areas in Iowa, 2 college students (same college) and 4 or more other young adults plus a 5 year old. All gathered inside with 70 year olds who have health problems.
I have co-morbities (kidney problem & type II diabetes,) and have been coughing my head off this year thanks to wildfires, dry high winds blowing dust, and allergies making my asthma flare up.
I figure 1 year out of 28 years of marriage we can skip the holidays. Otherwise Mistermage could quarantine for 14 days at the boys’ home… since they all work together. He laughed and said it really was ok that we not go this year.
I live in suburban Chicago, with my wife. Her sister (married with three teenaged kids) and mother both live within about a half-hour of us. My family is up in Green Bay; my sister lives with my parents, and her adult daughter (my niece) lives a few miles away from them. Our parents are all in their 80s, and each of them have several chronic health issues.
In a normal year:
We’d have between 50 and 100 kids show up at the door for Halloween.
We’d spend Thanksgiving either with my in-laws, at my sister-in-law’s house, or with my family, at my parents’ house. We alternate years for that, and this year would have been up in Green Bay.
We’d spend Christmas Eve with my in-laws (again, at my sister-in-law’s house), then drive up to Green Bay on Christmas morning, and spend a few days visiting with my family, and some local friends.
We’d celebrate New Year’s Eve locally, at the house of some friends, with a few other couples.
None of that is going to happen this year. We’ll likely be doing some Zoom or Facetime calls to try to fill the void, but otherwise, it’s just going to be my wife and me in our house, with the cats. I know that my mom is already very depressed about the fact that we won’t be able to get together for the holidays.
We never go anywhere for Thanksgiving, any way, so that hasn’t changed.
Some relatives have already cancelled any Christmas activities.
Closer to now, the Halloween parties we go to have been cancelled. I don’t know if we’ll get any kids for Halloween this year. (I suspect we’ll get some, since the guy down the street both has kids and is a COVID denier) So we’ll probably have more candy for us from what we’ve bought to give away.
We’ve decorated pumpkins and put up a Halloween/Thanksgiving decoration display.
Further on down the road, the Arisia science fiction convention in January will be all virtual this year.
It seems likely that interstate travel in Australia will be allowed by Christmas, so my wife and I will be able to visit her parents in Wagga Wagga, NSW - and probably will. Thanksgiving isn’t a thing here in Australia; November would be the wrong season anyway.
Guess my eldest nephew has decided he wants to host Thanksgiving. It’s been decided and expressed to the family that I’m out. He called me a wimp.
I won’t say what my response was.
Nephew is a hoaxer.
Told mom she can do what she wants. If she goes, I probably wouldn’t then see her until almost before Xmas. If she doesn’t, we can either do take out from her favorite Chinese restaurant or I’ll order a Thanksgiving dinner from a wonderful restaurant and bring it to her house.
Bribery? Yes. Do I care? Nope.
For the past several years, we have hosted friends for Thanksgiving. 4-5 other couples and some of their kids. A month ago I told them it wasn’t happening this year. Since then, three of the families have got it. Two have recovered and one just got it last week so we’ll see. No one in my household has had it and I am trying everything to keep it that way. I have several co-morbidities and my mother, who is almost 80, lives with us.
However, I have been debating lately, are we safe to invite those who have had it and recovered? I probably won’t go through with it if only due to appearances. I don’t want the neighbors to think I don’t take it seriously, even though I’m sure a fair number aren’t either.
Oh, you can bet a fair number (62%, according to a recent Gallup poll ) aren’t taking it seriously. That is, they “partially isolate” or don’t isolate at all. Not sure what “partially isolate” means but suspect it’s “We don’t invite strangers our gatherings.”
In answer to your question is that it depends on whether they’ve had a negative test since then (or 2, to be on the safe side). And you’d have to trust that they’re being 100% honest, both that they’ve had COVID and that they had a negative test.
“We know that the incubation period for Covid-19 is up to 14 days. And before that, you can be testing negative, and have no symptoms,” emergency medicine physician Dr. Leana Wen said.
“But you could actually be harboring the virus and be able to transmit it to others.”
With you having co-morbidities and your elderly mother in the household, you’re wise to take no chances.
There was never a thought that those who have not had it would have been invited. I’m not going to ask my friends to get retested for a negative result. This was all just a pipe dream really. I’m going to keep hunkering down and hope we can see them at 4th of July.
I wish wish wish we were just staying isolated. But traditionally we have other family come to our house, and everybody is moving forward with those plans. That’d be mixing three separate households: ours (both in our 60s with multiple predisposing chronic illnesses), our daughter’s (two people who work out in public and one offspring who has been attending public school IRL for 2 days a week), and my spouse’s ex / the kid’s biological dad (whose vehicle was parked at a local bar probably a third of the numerous times I’ve driven by it). I’m really scared. So far I haven’t talked anybody out of it, but I’m hoping there will be stronger and stronger public messaging in the next week and a half to help press my case.
I wish this was the sort of thing I could just say, no, I don’t feel safe. But it’s at my house, hosted by half the two people who live here. If she gets sick, very probably she gets sick for both of us.
Anyway, the plan is to eat outdoors under a tent on a deck, so some safety built into it. But I sure do wish I was one of the posters saying they were going to be alone!
You should be, and you should speak up. I think you have the right to say that you don’t want to host these people in your house. It’s tough to do, but the sooner you raise the subject the easier it will be to cancel.
Agreed. Absolutely do not get pushed into going forward if you are not comfortable. It’s your house, and this is not some etiquette issue or little family squabble, this is literally life and death. It’s not personal, it’s just reality. You want to still be here to hopefully get together next year. Missing one dinner is not going to kill anyone.