By Katie Goss ’23
Staff Writer
With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging across the country, this year’s Thanksgiving was different for Mount Holyoke students, as most were already home or staying with friends. Many students celebrated with their households and decided not to have family visit or travel.
Fiona Milton ’22 was at home with her parents this year and celebrated the holiday with them. She was not able to see her sister or grandmother for the holiday because they live in other parts of the country.
“[It was] the first Thanksgiving without my older sister or my grandmother, but we had to do what was safest,” Milton said. “I couldn’t see anyone this year, so I just made people cards instead.”
Lupe Antonio Lopez ’23 also stayed home with her family to celebrate. She spent the day eating, relaxing and doing some homework. Although it was a more relaxed Thanksgiving than usual, she was glad to be with her family, as she had stayed on campus last year for the holiday. “I just wanted to spend time with my family,” Lopez said.
Grace Wallsinger ’23 also had a relaxed Thanksgiving in her household with her parents and older brother. “My mom made dinner, and I baked pies, and the next day we put out all the Christmas decorations and had a family gingerbread decorating contest,” she said. “It was lowkey compared to our usual Thanksgiving with all the extended family, but it was really nice.”
Some students celebrated the holiday a little differently. Eugenia Montsaroff ’23 is currently taking a gap year and working as an EMT in Tukwila, Washington, where she worked a 24-hour shift on Thanksgiving. There are four people in her crew: She and her partner are in one ambulance, and the other two are in another. They all brought some food and had a potluck between calls.
“Everyone brought a little something — I brought pie and veggies; my partner brought steaks and a little portable grill, and the other crew brought mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sparkling cider and lots of snacks. It was hard because we kept getting calls while we were trying to cook everything. There’s sort of an EMS superstition that bringing steak means you’ll always get calls and have to let your food get cold, but we managed to work in a few hours of time eating together,” Montsaroff said.
She was able to celebrate the holiday with her family, who she is staying with, on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “It was really nice to be able to share food with people I care about — that’s what most holidays are about for me,” she said.
Montsaroff said that she is used to 24-hour shifts and does not mind working on the holidays. However, being an EMT during a pandemic does provide some worry.
“Obviously being an EMT during a pandemic is stressful — I'm always worried about bringing something home to my family — but we’ve kind of reached a point at work now where it’s just kind of normal. We have our PPE and our procedures that we put in place for respiratory patients, and then you just try to go on with your life and not kill yourself with worry,” Montsaroff said.
With Thanksgiving being a major holiday for friends and family to come together, there is usually a surge in travel in the preceding days. The New York Times reported that about 27 percent of surveyed Americans were planning to celebrate the holiday with people outside of their households. Although medical officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people stay home, it was reported that over 50 million people still traveled over the holiday, only 5 million fewer than those reported to have traveled last year. One NPR article said that airports and planes were more crowded around this holiday than they have been since the start of the pandemic.
As stated on the CDC’s website, “Travel increases your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.” However, the CDC details precautions you can take while traveling if you decide to do so, such as wearing masks, social distancing and washing your hands as often as possible. They also go over each type of travel option, such as by airplane, car or bus, and give recommendations on how to take extra precautions for each type of transportation.
Additionally, the CDC website has a special section for holidays in regard to COVID-19 that explains whether to attend a gathering, how to host a gathering if you decide to do so and how to cope with holiday stress. There is a special section for Thanksgiving outlining low- to high-risk activities and guidelines to determine what people should do for the holiday.
The website states, “This holiday season, consider how your holiday plans can be modified to reduce the spread of COVID-19 to keep your friends, families, and communities healthy and safe.” The CDC also said that although it has guidelines to consider for small gatherings, these are not to replace any laws or rules set in place by the state or county and that everyone should stay home.
Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that restrictions and recommendations to not travel or see anyone outside of your household will continue into the winter holidays, as it is expected that the COVID-19 situation in the country will worsen in the coming weeks. As of Nov. 29, COVID-19 cases broke 4 million, twice the amount that was recorded in October.
Fauci said, “I think we are going to have to make decisions as a nation, state, city and family that we are in a very difficult time, and we’re going to have to do the kinds of restrictions of things we would have liked to have done, particularly in this holiday season, because we’re entering into what’s really a precarious situation.”
In the last week, more than 1 million new COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC website.