As COVID-19 cases rise, families have to rethink past traditions
Image of a collage of families connecting virtually. Images captured by Shantanu Basu, Héleni Fernández and CDC. Created using BeFunky.
As we begin the holiday season, families seeking tradition and joy have been further thwarted by a worrying upward trend in cases, deaths, and hospitalizations associated with COVID-19.
Image of current Covid-19 cases per day for the U.S. Image provided by The New York Times.
COVID-19 cases in Oregon rose by 19% over the last 14 days, and deaths rose by 124%. Across the United States, cases have been rising by 16%, and deaths by 47%. On December 7th, Oregon reported 1,307 new cases, and the United States (U.S.) reported 202,268.
The current surge likely started with Halloween. Large parties likely triggered the surge rather than trick-or-treating. State health authorities identified five Halloween parties, one of whom had 100 guests, as being responsible for a portion of the cases. Thanksgiving did not help the spike. Despite the CDC pleading with families to stay home, more than 6 million people took flights.
“After every holiday is a spike,” said Barbara Ostos, chair of the Emergency Response Team at Catlin Gabel School (CGS). She added that she understands that it is “really hard to not gather with your families during the holidays,” but that we need to have “safe and limited gatherings.”
Past holidays, like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, have also resulted in a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Image of a graph showing Covid-19 associated hospitalization rates. Image from the CDC.
The spread of COVID-19 is likely to increase during winter. In addition to holiday gatherings, people are also more likely to gather indoors, in areas with poor ventilation. SARS-CoV2, the virus which causes COVID-19, favors colder, drier conditions without direct sunlight. Warmer and more humid conditions also aid in degrading infectious viruses on surfaces more quickly.
Experts predict that COVID-19 deaths could double by March, reaching over 500,000 deaths.
There are two probable vaccines for COVID-19, created by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, which are both about 95% effective. However, mass distribution wouldn’t be possible until at least the new year, forcing people across the globe to continue their socially distant methods through the holidays.
An important question has been raised for families: How do we safely celebrate holidays, continue past traditions and create new ones, while attempting to bring joy to those around us?
Fortunately, our community has proven that they are resilient and are adaptive. Shantanu Basu, a Lower School parent, shared that since the beginning of the pandemic, his family has celebrated four different birthdays and Diwali.
“The first birthday was around May and June and was [with] our joint family at my partner’s place with her mom and dad that drove up from Salem,” said Basu. “We were together on the outer deck and were socially distant. We celebrated again in September. We celebrated [his child’s] birthday at TopGolf with three of his friends in two different bays with their COVID restrictions and social distancing rules in place.”
He later went on to describe what his family would have typically done for Diwali, the festival of lights. “We would have normally gone to the Hindu temple and spent maybe half an hour there with the prayer service and then met other family or friends,” said Basu.
While his family was unable to flawlessly replicate some of their previous Diwali traditions, they were able to somewhat continue their long-standing traditions of seeing family and visiting their local temple.
“We did go to the temple, but we went [during] off hours so we were there by ourselves,” he described. “We then celebrated Diwali just within the family at home without meeting anybody else other than on Zoom.”
Basu and his children meet with his extended family to celebrate Diwali. Image captured and shared by Shantanu Basu.
Héleni Fernández, an Upper School parent, also shared some of her family’s adjustments, past traditions, and new hopes for the upcoming holidays.
“We did family Zoom calls [to celebrate holidays] which were very funny because the grandparents had many mishaps. We could hear them and not see them or vice versa,” Fernández shared.
Fernández later went on to describe their usual traditions and how those have been affected by COVID-19.
“We, like a lot of people, don’t have family in Portland, so we always travel,” said Fernández. “Every Christmas we go to Puerto Rico for pretty much the whole week. I have been there every year for every Christmas of my life except the two years I was too pregnant to travel. We love going to Puerto Rico; they’re very festive people and it’s like a party all the time, and people love getting together... It’s a very festive atmosphere. We have most of our family there.”
Fernández later remarked with a sad tone that “it’s going to be really weird to not be there.”She shared that like most of us, it’s difficult to imagine celebrating in a different location and not being surrounded by the typical people.
“Being there feels like Christmas. Elsewhere, I can’t imagine it feeling like Christmas,” Fernández continued.
While recently passed and upcoming holidays will most hopefully look very different for most people, some are trying to find light in a dark situation. This unfortunate spell of self-isolation had brought some families new and exciting traditions.
“For Thanksgiving, we’ll do the typical American thing and just be here. Honestly, for Thanksgiving, we tend to go on the road or go skiing and then we eat out… Since we’re gone a lot, it’s kind of nice to do it [at home],” Fernández said with an upbeat smile.
Ostos spoke of her families’ experience this holiday season.
“My family and my husband’s family live in San Diego, and we usually go to San Diego for the holidays but we’re not [this year]. We’re going to stay here and celebrate as our own little family of four,” she said. “That feels hard. But we also put up our Christmas tree this weekend and decorated our house, and that felt great.”
Ostos shared the question that helps her move forward. “We have to find these moments of [asking oneself] what joyful things can we do?”
While staying home and practicing guidelines is difficult, especially during the holiday season when one typically visits with loved ones and friends, it is becoming increasingly important to do so to preserve lives. During these trying times, past traditions have been severely altered or discarded. However, new traditions can be made, and you can reinvent past ones.