2021 Home For the Holidays

2021 Home for the Holidays Lincoln Daily News November 24, 2021 Page 35 he 2020 holiday season was a quiet one in my neck of the woods. At Thanksgiving I saw my immediate family - a whopping three people, all of whom were healthy and thankful. At Christmas I spent roughly a day-and-a-half with a handful of people from my partner’s family. Again, everyone was healthy and the extended family stayed away. I stayed home on New Years’ with a drink or two in hand, and I went to bed just after midnight. I woke up easy and started the year well enough. Everything was simpler and quieter. Were it not for the reasons why, I would have appreciated it even more. Last year was a concentrated effort on the parts of so many people to avoid gathering together and spreading corona virus. It clearly wasn’t enough, because we’re still dealing with the same problem, and it’s arguably worse. Then again, I think it’s enough to have one major holiday between November and December, but no one agrees with me on that, either. In the interest of complete honesty, in a perfect world we wouldn’t gather together at all this year. That’s not a joke - it’s not worth risking death just to hear your uncle complain about young people again and eat the same dry turkey. But to humor those who think that things are somehow “better” this year, let me paint you a picture of what I think gathering for the holidays should look in 2021. People are really going to try their best to have a “traditional” gathering, like we did prior to 2020. I’m here to say that that probably won’t work. And it doesn’t really need to, either. I’ll start with food, the drawing feature of most holidays. If I learned anything in 2020, it’s that time truly has no meaning. I went to bed in March, and I woke up in September. I think I Curmudgeon’s holidays almost perfect, except for... T Continued n