Have Yourself A Very Little Christmas
The downsizing of Thanksgiving was the junior varsity game. Now it’s time to see who’s ready to have a socially acceptable and economically responsible Christmas.
Reports from friends and relatives on Turkey Day were in the range of “meets expectations”. Dinner table attendance down 60%, football game-watching down 45% (the NFL helped by reducing their scheduled games by 33%), size of turkey down 26% from 19 pounds to 14 pounds, length of tryptophan-induced naps down 18%. For those families that mandated out any discussion of politics or the pandemic from conversation, it narrowed the topics down to the weather and how the dog can lick basically every inch of his body.
We’re committed to do our part to have a right-sized Christmas befitting of 2020. First thing to knock off the list is the singing of Christmas carols since it’s a spreader activity; humming four bars of any song while wearing a mask is allowed. “In The Bleak Midwinter” is forbidden under any conditions.
Holiday decorations should be limited. In our house we have taken The Elf On The Shelf and substituted it with The Boy In The Basement. Our son came home from university prior to Thanksgiving with a positive COVID test and has been quarantining downstairs for a week now. Instead of an advent calendar, he has a COVID calendar where he gets to count off the 14 days before his release. To his credit, he is utilizing the lack of distractions to focus on his end-of term exams and projects, and we have gotten used to the daily 2PM text when he asks what’s for breakfast. It makes us nostalgic to those good old high school years when we only interacted with him via text.
There aren’t any new Christmas movies to see in theaters, so re-watching some of the classics On Demand seems like the holly jolly thing to do. “Home Alone” might be too close to touching a nerve, but keep an eye out for the modern-day remake of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer where Herbie wants to become a virologist, and on the reindeer team Donner gets replaced by Pfizer because of his special ability to transport packages in cold climates.
Not sure what to do about the tree this year. Our go-to place is a summer ice cream stand at which the vendors park a 48-foot trailer and cram a forest of fresh-cut trees into a tiny parking lot. Troubling questions abound including (1) will the tree guys be wearing masks? (2) can the virus molecules live in the needles and branches of a balsam fir, and for how long? (3) if we wear hazmat suits to buy a tree will people assume that we’re the ones who should be quarantining? The pressure of this decision is pointing us towards that $200 artificial tree that is highly rated on Amazon (but hey, free shipping!).
Speaking of Amazon, in lieu of freezing our buns off at the local annual Holiday Parade we should just enjoy the convoy of Amazon, FedEx, UPS and Post Office vehicles that never seem to leave our neighborhood. True to the spirit of customer relationship management, all the drivers know our ferocious (really a scaredy-cat) dog by name and his preference in brands of dog biscuits. In simpler times you would always want to remember to leave a gratuity to your mail carrier around Christmas. Would it be tacky to give her an Amazon gift card this year?
Holiday shopping online is a given this season, the question is how much do you spend in the middle of a pandemic? According to an August CNBC poll 60% of Americans describe themselves as “savers” rather than “spenders” since the spring, and more than half say they have spent less over the past 12 months. This is great news given that Americans are notoriously poor at saving money for a rainy day (let alone for a health emergency). Some of you reading this article may have been a good amount of unspent funds from vacations and weekend plans that were scuttled by COVID this year…do you release the dam of pent-up spending and surprise your spouse with that new Lexus SUV (like in the commercial)? Or do you double-down with your savings plan so that future days can be merry and bright? My unsolicited advice to you would be to take the long view: that delayed gratification is the best kind and modeling a fiscally responsible behavior is actually the best gift you can give your kids. My unsolicited advice to my wife would be to splurge on the All Wheel Drive package and the headlamp washers.
Of course, the most important part of the holidays is bringing the family together. Because we need to get all our kids into a holiday photo that will accompany the holiday message that will chronicle all the things that we didn’t do in 2020. Must admit some pleasure in not receiving braggy Xmas cards from friends with their selfie from the top of Mount Everest crowing “Wish you were here!” This year it will be more like “We walked our dog over 1,000 times.”
I know that we will get through the next few weeks with the right attitude and our values and our savings accounts intact. Stay tuned for future articles with advice from me about how to execute a socially distanced Valentine’s Day.
Tim Guen is President of CareerMap and (usually) provides frequent insights into career-building during economically challenging times.