How to deal with Thanksgiving during a pandemic and election year

What better way to celebrate the international apocalypse known as 2020 than with Thanksgiving, politics, and a pandemic sprinkled on for good measure? Remember to use this as time to spend on yourself, doing what you want to do. 

Although some people’s holiday may involve a distant relative a little too comfortable with their quasi-racist remarks, it doesn’t mean you should suffer any more than you should. No matter how much side-eyed looks you and other family members may throw, that isn’t going to change the fact that this holiday season is being celebrated during one of the most controversial and polarizing elections. 

There may not come a time where those of us who don’t enjoy our family members' invasive questioning can press the eject button and retreat to our own personal sanctuary. Use it while you can. Whether it be your bedroom or a friend’s house, regardless what you choose, you’re choosing it because it’s something you legitimately want to do.

This may be a selfish sentiment, but given the global situation, we should be allowed a selfish moment or two — as long as whatever option we pick does not harm those we love. Denying to be a part of a hectic Thanksgiving may hurt an ego, but it won’t physically harm, or put in danger, the ones we’re saying no to. 

Right now, there’s plenty of ammunition to be gathered over the span of eleven months for these relatives to shoot bigoted bullets in your direction. This year’s Thanksgiving may have more heated arguments at the dinner table than one can hope to endure, but why must you endure it if you could just outright ignore it? People have been steeping in this stress-induced fever nightmare for a while now, and given the context, families would understand if adding the pressure of intense family debates will be the tipping point. 

Unfortunately, we have been put in yet another quarantine. Gov. Pritzker has made the equivalent of a parent asking their child to “please listen to me for once,” in hopes that this heartfelt plea will prompt the public to actually listen to him (it won’t). In doing so, he’s also asked us to limit large family gatherings for Thanksgiving. This will cause a lot of families to take to FaceTime or Zoom for that large family interaction we love (tolerate) so much.

If your family’s Thanksgiving is unavoidable, having that interaction in front of a screen is quite possibly one of the best deterrents to the bombardment of family drama and political nonsense that always seems to invade the conversation. 

If you’re in front of a computer, one option for keeping the family bickering down to a minimum is with games. That way it creates enough distance between everyone to avoid making you a topic of discussion. 

However, if certain topics that you’d rather not want to be a part of get to you, you can either excuse yourself by stepping a couple of feet away from your computer, or use the best answer that modern technology has given us: The power of the mute button. Pressing the mute button is going to be a feel-good sensation. 

Most of us, despite our many reservations for attending the traditional politically-fueled dinner table arguments, are decent enough people who want to keep our families out of harm’s way and limit the interaction. 

The stereotypical Thanksgiving is not the route to go this year, so new ways for celebrating will have to be welcomed. This year, Thanksgiving has truly become an optional holiday.