As of today, the COVID-19 virus has afflicted over 16 million Americans and caused or contributed to the death of 297,837. For Ohio, the comparable figures are 553,461 and 7,477. Something as sweeping and lethal as this pandemic was bound to have a profound impact on how people observed the end-of-year holidays. I will use my own family as an example.

At Thanksgiving, my wife and I typically host a group of 20-30 extended family members and a dinner that features a 27-pound turkey, a dozen or more side dishes, and numerous desserts (mostly pies). This year, we settled for a ten-pound turkey breast, a half dozen side dishes, and two pumpkin pies. We didn’t need any more than that since we only had six people at our table, including two children. Last year, we also held a touch football game at a local park. Twenty people participated as players, officials, and spectators. We hoped to make this game an annual event, but, of course, it didn’t happen this year.

The Christmas season has brought similar sacrifices. There have not been so many visits to friends’ homes, nor so many friends coming to visit us. A big cookie exchange (dubbed the “cookiethon”) that my wife started over a decade ago was canceled, and a ladies’ brunch she typically holds had to be conducted as a Zoom conference.  Previous Christmas seasons have found us enjoying a “Dickens” holiday dinner at historic Ohio Village or a buffet supper at Franklin Park Conservatory — but not in 2020. We’ve worn protective masks while Christmas shopping and have perhaps done a little more online purchasing than we have in the past. And now we have an evening ritual of turning on the national news (usually CBS) and listening with trepidation to the updated nationwide and worldwide statistics on the pandemic’s human devastation.

But it’s important to note that some holiday traditions have been beyond the pandemic’s reach. We still have our ten-foot Christmas tree decked out with every ornament it can hold. We still listen to Christmas music every night and catch at least a few of the Christmas specials on television. We still sent out dozens of Christmas cards and receive many each day. We still made trays of goodies for our neighbors and hung our garland of lights around the entrance to our home. And for the 10th year, PJ, the Elf on the Shelf, is playing hide-and-seek with our grandchildren. When Christmas Eve arrives, it’s doubtful we’ll attend any church service, but we may have a religious observance by ourselves. Afterward, we’ll have at least a few family members over to open gifts and enjoy a delicious beef tenderloin dinner.

As I mentioned, Becky and I usually tune in to the evening news, fearing to hear how hospitals are struggling to treat people with the coronavirus, how jobs are being lost because of it, and how it continues to claim lives. But now we also listen with hope — hope that vaccines are being developed to immunize us from the disease, and hope that once people get inoculated, the coronavirus will no longer threaten us as it does now. Most of all, perhaps, we hope when December 2021 arrives, we’ll be able to celebrate Christmas will all the traditions and activities that make it such a special part of our lives.