Being Thankful Even Now

The year is coming to a close, and I am sure the whole world is ready to see it go. From a fiery New Year’s to an unprecedented pandemic and a heated election season, 2020 will be a period not easy to forget. However, the season has shifted to many people’s favorite time of the year: the holidays. Although they may not be the quite the same this occasion, people everywhere are still finding ways to celebrate.

For McMurry’s student population, many are going home for good during the Thanksgiving break. As a safety precaution, McMurry University will be switching completely online following the Thanksgiving holiday, so as to prevent people coming back from their homes and potentially spreading the virus. Most students are happy with the decision as it means they have less in-person classes to attend.

While some students are spending their Thanksgiving Day as they usually would, others are forced to change their yearly traditions.

An anonymous student said, “Usually around this time, my mother would host a Thanksgiving party and invite everyone we knew to come eat. Our house is pretty small, but everyone would come because my mom’s cooking is delicious. Because of the coronavirus though, we are just celebrating Thanksgiving within the family as most of our guests in the past are elderly and would be at risk.”

Others are having to adopt new skills, such as cooking their own Thanksgiving meal for the first time, as they can’t meet with their family due to quarantine. One student said that for both Christmas and Thanksgiving this year, it would just be her and her grandfather as her parents could not afford to come and visit as the safety precautions in their city were much stricter.

Even amongst the twice turbulent times of the holiday season and the still long-lived wave of the pandemic, people will not stop celebrating. Celebrating the family that they have, the friends they’ve gathered, and the thousands of other things that are worth being thankful over. Being able to see the spark of hope not yet extinguished is a testament to the steadfast nature of humanity, and the joy that we can always bring to each other.