{"id":101319,"date":"2020-10-29T14:00:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=101319"},"modified":"2020-10-29T16:44:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T21:44:12","slug":"counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting Our Blessings for the COVID Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Jean G. Gispen<\/p><\/div>\n

The ongoing pandemic has dramatically changed how we celebrate holidays, and Halloween is the next holiday that isn\u2019t right this year.<\/p>\n

South 11th Street, where I live, is perfect for trick-or-treaters: straight, flat, with very little through-traffic and with generous homeowners on both sides of the street. One woman has dressed as a witch, with a smoking cauldron full of dry ice. One man has lain in a coffin in his front yard, scaring the wits out of trick-or-treaters when he rose from the dead to give them treats.<\/p>\n

We are the ones who give out ghost hands, vinyl gloves filled with popcorn. In the early years, these hands had candy corn fingernails too, but as the number of trick-or-treaters rose, the ghosts became less willing to donate their fingernails. One year, the ghosts were completely noncooperative. That year, we gave out chocolate bats and bat droppings in little zip-close bags.<\/p>\n

This year, we are nervous about Halloween and the thought of some 100 or 150 trick-or-treaters \u2013 and parents \u2013asking for candy.<\/p>\n

During last week\u2019s Sentinel testing<\/a> at Ole Miss, four asymptomatic people were positive for SARS-CoV-2 out of 152 people tested. This is a positivity rate of 2.6%. If Oxford has a similar positivity rate, we would expect four trick-or-treaters at our door to be positive for the virus and not know it.<\/p>\n

My husband and I are in the vulnerable older category as far as COVID is concerned, with grown children and as-yet-nonexistent grandchildren. So we, our ghosts and our bats are taking a break in 2020. Our house will be the one without skeletons or carved pumpkins decorating the yard, with lights turned off in the front of the house and inhabitants skulking sadly in the back of the house.<\/p>\n

We are counting on making ghost hands again in 2021.<\/p>\n

Thanksgiving is another question in our minds. Early in our marriage, it was always in Jackson at my parents\u2019 house, with whatever other siblings made it there from out-of-state. Later, it was at our house, with my parents driving up from Jackson, Memphis siblings coming down, and the Atlanta brother driving over.<\/p>\n

Recently, it has been in Memphis at No. 8\u2019s house. A couple of times, it has been at the beach in Florida with our family of friends rather than with our family by blood.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll skip the Memphis gathering this year \u2013 and to be honest, No. 8 hasn\u2019t offered it. My husband and I live in our bubble of two, and we are not willing to chance joining that bubble with the bubbles of my two Memphis brothers and their families. When families or friends gather together without masks or social distancing, everyone there takes on the risk of the least-cautious person in the gathering.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that my brothers or their wives or their children are incautious or irresponsible, but I know that my brothers work in hospitals, my sister-in-law works in a school and I work in a clinic. We have multiple exposures to other people, which makes gathering in a group risky.<\/p>\n

Will we still celebrate Thanksgiving? You bet. Our older daughter will come home from Nashville. She usually drives the four hours to get here without stopping, but if she stops, she wears a mask in the store and gloves to pump gas. She cleans her hands with hand sanitizer when she gets in the car again.<\/p>\n

We let her in our house, but we make her stay at least 6 feet away from us and eat at the end of the table distant from our end. If she wants to help cook, she and we wear masks. Everyone washes hands frequently, we don\u2019t sing or scream or hug, and we try to space ourselves throughout the house.<\/p>\n

Even if she takes a COVID test before coming home and she\u2019s negative, we\u2019ll still keep her masked and 6 feet away, because a negative COVID test means she was negative right then, at that instant. It does not guarantee that she is free of SARS-CoV-2. The virus could be in her, biding its time to make her infectious and give her symptoms.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll cook turkey (in a bag), cornbread dressing (the traditional, with celery and parsley and onions and turkey stock), bread dressing (with apples or nuts or sausage, using whatever recipe appeals to us this year), green beans or other vegetable, and desserts. We\u2019ll have salad. Forget the potatoes; the cooks prefer dressing to potatoes.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll share some of whatever looks best with the friends who shared the Florida Thanksgivings with us, and they\u2019ll give us some of what they cook. We\u2019ll wear masks and stay 6 feet apart when we pass the food off to one other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll call or Zoom or Facetime the daughter in Berlin.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll hike in the woods or around town, because that\u2019s what we do after eating Thanksgiving turkey.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll watch a movie on TV. We\u2019ll read books.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll count our blessings: that we are healthy and here to share this unusual Thanksgiving; that we have food on the table, a house and a job to go back to on Monday; that we haven\u2019t put anyone else at risk by the way we celebrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ongoing pandemic has dramatically changed how we celebrate holidays, and Halloween is the next holiday that isn\u2019t right this year. South 11th Street, where I live, is perfect for trick-or-treaters: straight, flat, with very little through-traffic and with generous homeowners on both sides of the street. One woman has dressed as a witch, withRead the story …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":99008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[899],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nCounting Our Blessings for the COVID Holidays - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Counting Our Blessings for the COVID Holidays - Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The ongoing pandemic has dramatically changed how we celebrate holidays, and Halloween is the next holiday that isn\u2019t right this year. South 11th Street, where I live, is perfect for trick-or-treaters: straight, flat, with very little through-traffic and with generous homeowners on both sides of the street. One woman has dressed as a witch, withRead the story …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-10-29T19:00:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-10-29T21:44:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/UCIMG-1409a.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/\",\"name\":\"Ole Miss News\",\"description\":\"The official source for University of Mississippi news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/UCIMG-1409a.jpg\",\"width\":200,\"height\":200,\"caption\":\"Dr. Jean G. Gispen\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/\",\"name\":\"Counting Our Blessings for the COVID Holidays - Ole Miss News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-29T19:00:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-29T21:44:12+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/d4bf035e3525c2ab25705f9027efa4b7\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/counting-our-blessings-for-the-covid-holidays\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/d4bf035e3525c2ab25705f9027efa4b7\",\"name\":\"mdiggs\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/1.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d371a0d52cfd35bcb9097cd51563d680?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"mdiggs\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101319"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101323,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101319\/revisions\/101323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}