Typically, this is the time of the year when we start reading articles such as “How to talk to your pro-Trump uncle at Thanksgiving” or “How to make sure your woke Marxist cousin doesn’t ruin your holiday.” This year, there is a raging debate over whether people should have Thanksgiving in the first place.
The freakout over Thanksgiving is being driven by two factors.
One is that family gatherings have been a leading way in which COVID-19 has spread. And Thanksgiving is the perfect storm. People traveling from multiple states. Eating a large communal meal together. Talking loudly. Congregating after the meal for more discussions.
When they are around their families, people get comfortable and are much less likely to socially distance. And when out-of-town family members visit, they often stay through the whole weekend — meaning days of sustained close contact.
The second reason is that we are in the midst of a large nationwide surge. So, this potential mass superspreader event (or, more precisely, tens of millions of smaller superspreader events) is happening when we are already at a high baseline of infections.
Rather than go into all of the various metrics, I think this tweet by Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation sums the current state of affairs pretty well.
When “hotspot” ceases to become a useful concept.https://t.co/m262LZY2Ie pic.twitter.com/ZUxhPCFqtv
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) November 11, 2020
On the other hand, my friend Karol Markowicz makes a compelling pro-Thanksgiving case. The short version is, given the duration of the pandemic, people should not give up all those things that make life worth living. “You’ve been through an insane year, you’re tired and worn out,” she wrote. “You need to collapse into the comfortable embrace of those who know and love you best. For God’s sake, go see your family on Thanksgiving.”
As somebody who loves Thanksgiving, I am certainly sympathetic to this argument. After all, what is better than a holiday dedicated to seeing your family and gorging on great food and extravagant desserts as a matter of national pride?
With that said, the recent great news on the vaccine front scrambles the calculus a bit. In a world in which we’re dealing with a pandemic of indefinite duration that could drag on for years, it starts to become much more sensible to say, “To heck with it, I’m gonna live my life.” But if there’s now a good reason to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that we could have a significant segment of the population vaccinated by spring, there is a stronger argument for holding out for another few months.
I certainly would not begrudge anybody, such as my friend Karol, who has decided to go ahead with Thanksgiving while taking some extra precautions.
However, I also think those still on the fence between embracing Thanksgiving or canceling it altogether may want to entertain a third option: delaying Thanksgiving.
Unlike a religious holiday that has to be observed on a specific date, Thanksgiving is secular. The timing has actually shifted over the course of its history. There’s no reason why family cannot gather to eat turkey and have dessert in, say, late April. Sure, some of the dishes may change based on the season — you might have strawberry rhubarb pie instead of pumpkin, for instance — and you may see flowers blooming instead of fallen leaves covering the ground. But the essential elements of food and family would still be around.
Under this approach, people could make a pact with their usual Thanksgiving guests to gather for a large secular family feast in the spring, with no need for all sorts of compromises and extra hoops added due to COVID-19.
This idea may not work for everybody. But for those contemplating a scaled-back Thanksgiving or canceling it altogether, this may be a good alternative to consider.
