Gathering

 

If anything is missing these holidays, it is gathering. Meeting at the local watering hole with work compatriots. Having friends over for holiday cheer. Traveling to grandma’s to have the family together.

Dining and drinking and toasting good cheer is better in a group, but not this year.

No packing the car full and going to the big game. No office parties. Socially distant lines awaiting the big guy in the red suit is questionable.

There will be no filled venues to listen to “Christmas Oratorio” by J.S. Bach or watch Swan Lake. The Messiah presentation will have to be watched on television. Even the three wise men in the nativity on the lawn must be six feet apart and wear mask. Santa will just dump the toys down the chimney so you can save baking cookies.

Can’t show off your seasonal garb at the big dance that is so crowded you have to check your wallet and virginity when you cross the floor. Legends made of overindulgence or emotional moments will have to be put on pause this year.

You’ll have to see the new baby online and hope the deliveries arrive at the correct address. A zoom sing-a-long should not be recorded.

No zipping off to Europe or the ski lodge this year. Even a get-a-way at the beach would lose it’s mystic with hula girls wearing mask (and little else). Who wants to stay in a bed that someone else just slept in?

This year you are alone.

You might have a cramped single room or a vast empty mansion, but this holiday there will be no gathering.

You can have a pet for company or dinner. You might have the immediate family who has been bumping into you for the last nine months. You have grown closer to your family than you ever anticipated.

You might have been able to walk the dog or sit out on the veranda but now the weather is colder. Your gathering is all the blankets to pile on the bed as you re-watch all the same movies while being bombarded by commercials touting gifts you should be buying online to remind others you are still alive.

They say it will be over with the vaccine, but they could be wrong. We may never see you face-to-face again?

I personally have never been fond of crowds. They just get in the way, are too loud and smell funny. Sometimes gatherings don’t turn out so well.