December is barely out of the gate, but it feels nonetheless as though the Christmas season has been barreling down on us for a while.
Holiday lights are going up early, Christmas tree sales are brisk and holiday music is blasting from every speaker.
The urge to make Christmas come bigger and earlier than ever is understandable.
Rituals are important and our desire to cling to any semblance of normalcy in this anything-but-normal time is strong.
We want to beat back the darkness, in what has been an incredibly bleak and scary year.
Truthfully, we’d all like to take a pause from the gloom at Christmas and go on our merry way.
But this year we’re also going to have to temper our expectations.
We’re all still waiting to see what the public health orders will be leading up to this holiday season, but realistically the theme of smaller is better is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Christmas is a big deal to many, and the temptation to throw caution to the wind on the pandemic precautions will be strong.
Our advice on that score: just don’t.
We’ve already seen the spike in cases that followed Halloween and Thanksgiving celebrations.
Sadly, the pandemic doesn’t care what day it is or that you’ve always had 25 around the Christmas table.
This year, as Dr. Bonnie Henry is fond of saying, will be different.
It’ll be smaller, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be heartfelt.
The biggest gift we can give each other will be to make sure we’re all around to celebrate next year.
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