Almost every holiday this year has been cancelled or curtailed. Boo humbug
It’s already Labour Day. Every celebration from now until the Santa parade is being reworked
COVID-19 changed the way we celebrated Mother’s Day, Easter, Eid, Passover and Canada Day. There were fewer fireworks, churches and mosques were closed and extended family gatherings were banned.
We missed all the traditional markers of spring and summer in Toronto, from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March to Pride Toronto in June and the CNE in August and September.
We celebrated long-distance relationships on Zoom.
Now the pandemic is about to reshape everything from Labour Day onward, starting with back-to-school shopping and moving on to how we mark Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas and the Jewish high holidays.
Fewer parents planned to take part in the annual back-to-school shopping extravaganza that retailers look forward to all summer, according to retail research. Fewer parents are planning to send their kids trick-or-treating.
The Santa Claus Parade that every November kicks off Toronto’s countdown to Christmas is planned to take place as it has every year since 1905.
But it probably won’t feel quite the same. The charity is considering whether it will be able to allow people to line the streets to watch.
The city stopped issuing special events permits early in the pandemic, and may extend that ban before it expires at the end of September, according to Toronto Public Health.
“Certainly, we’re planning for any contingency, and we’re planning for a situation where we might not have the physical audience,” said Clay Charters, president and CEO of the Santa Claus Parade, adding that a final decision has not yet been made.
“There’s going to be a parade. It’s going to most likely look very different.”
The popular Christmas market held annually in the Distillery District has also been cancelled. Meanwhile, Geoff Bobb, executive director of Epilepsy Toronto, which organizes the Holiday Fair at Nathan Phillips Square each year, says it has submitted a modified plan to the city for approval of the event.
The number of vendors at the December fair in front of City Hall will be reduced to 80 from 100 to encourage physical distancing and some rides have been eliminated, Bobb said.
He is hopeful that because the Nathan Phillips Square site is more spread out than the Distillery District location, the city will allow the fair to proceed.
“We’re just sitting with our fingers crossed. We’ve had no indication to suggest it’s not going to occur, but the world is changing weekly,” said Bobb, adding that the event is an important fundraiser for Epilepsy Toronto.
Whether or not there will be fireworks on New Year’s Eve will be decided at a later date, and on the advice of Toronto Public Health, according to the city.
As for Halloween, research conducted in August by the retail data firm Field Agent Canada found that only 61per cent of parents are planning to allow their children to trick-or-treat this year, down from 83 per cent in 2019, a decline of 27 per cent.
Only 53 per cent of households are planning to hand out treats, compared to 65 per cent last year.
Polling done by Leger for the Retail Council of Canada found only 37 per cent of respondents were planning a back-to-school shop this year, compared to 41 per cent in 2019. They’re planning to spend $727 on average on everything from pencils to shoes, sports equipment, furniture and electronics, compared to $919 in 2019.
The only category where they expected to spend more was on health products, which includes masks in classrooms and other steps to meet COVID-19 health and safety protocols. Respondents were forecasting spending $49 in that category this year, compared to $28 in 2019.
While families may be looking forward to spending the holidays together, it remains to be seen what restrictions will govern gatherings this winter.
Since Toronto entered Stage 3 of reopening on July 31, new infections have been ticking slowly upwards. There is concern that when colder weather begins forcing people indoors, rising infection rates could trigger a return to stricter measures, like the ones that kept extended families apart earlier this year.
Waves of infections have characterized previous pandemics, including the 1918 Spanish Flu, which included a second larger and deadlier wave in the fall after a milder first wave in the spring and summer.
“We’re on track for that same pattern, though it may be modulated, flattened, stretched, by public health measures,” said epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman, of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Those measures include continued physical distancing, frequent and proper handwashing and wearing masks in indoor public spaces, including on public transit.
The Turkey Farmers of Ontario are prepared for anything at Thanksgiving after turkey sales soared unexpectedly during the COVID-19 lockdown at Easter.
“It was the best Easter we’ve had in a number of years,” said chairman Brian Ricker.
With plenty of time on their hands and nowhere to go, more people stayed home and tackled the task of cooking a whole bird.
“They’ve got more time because they’re not going out,” Ricker said. “Think of all those commuter hours that have been saved by COVID.”
At Holy Blossom Temple in Forest Hill, plans are underway for a drive-through Sukkah — a temporary structure erected during Sukkot, a celebration commemorating the years Jews spent in the desert after their liberation from slavery in Egypt. Sukkot will take place Oct. 2-9 this year.
A Sukkah is a hut with three walls and a partial roof representing the shelter God provided for Jews in the desert. This year’s Sukkah at Holy Blossom will feature a movable wall, to allow people to drive through.
“It’s brand new, invented for the pandemic,” Rabbi Yael Splansky said.
The huts are temporary — they go up during Sukkot and come down when it is done.
“It’s a symbol of how life is precarious, fragile. It’s supposed to be flimsy. If ever we had evidence that life is fragile, it’s this year,” said Splansky.
It’s not the only change wrought at the temple by the pandemic. Members are sitting shiva — a week of mourning after the death of a loved one — outdoors, receiving guests in their backyards.
Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday celebrating the Torah, is typically celebrated with joyful noise, including singing and dancing in schools. This year instead, there will be a Simchat Torah parade — the temple will rent pickup trucks and drive through neighbourhoods where their members live, with Torah scrolls and flags for the kids.
While services have resumed in Roman Catholic Churches in Toronto — with physical distancing and other measures in place — the archdiocese is aware that come Christmas, the situation might be different again, said spokesperson Neil MacCarthy.
“We have to prepare for a number of different scenarios if there is a second wave this fall. If churches have to close down again, we have to be prepared for that,” said MacCarthy. “We’ll have a better sense in six weeks or so.”
That could mean everything from a televised Christmas mass-only, or masses where reservations are needed. Rules that are already in place would be maintained — parishioners won’t be permitted to sing, there will be no choir, no hymnals in the church pews and no holy water fonts at the front doors.
Currently, about 45 per cent of the 225 churches in the archdiocese are using a reservation system, including St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica in downtown Toronto, MacCarthy said. Attendance at the churches is about 60,000 on Saturdays and Sundays, down from 250,000 to 300,000 before the pandemic hit. There are no Muslim holy days in the next few months, said Fareed Amin, chairman of the Islamic Institute of Toronto’s board of directors. But members of the IIT are struggling in the absence of old routines. Prayers are still being held, in a physically distanced fashion. Attendees must stay two metres apart and may not shake hands or embrace. Attendance is down to about 10 per cent of what it was pre-COVID, although Amin expects it will rebound once the pandemic ends. “People are feeling very isolated. We haven’t been together as a community since March,” said Amin.
Having to cancel another season of celebrations could impact our psychological well-being, according to experts.
Four surveys conducted for CAMH since early May revealed that while people were reporting less anxiety in July than they were in May, when the number of those becoming infected was higher, other symptoms of stress — loneliness and depression — remained roughly the same from May to July.
“We’ve adapted to the situation. In a sense things have stabilized in our lives,” said Hayley Hamilton, senior scientist at CAMH. “The fear is, of course, that if the numbers start going up with respect to infection, the numbers are going to go back up with respect to anxiety.”
Celebrations are a way for people to connect, and feeling connected is what makes life worth living, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life you Want.”
“We don’t want to feel like we’re an island,” says Lyubomirsky, who has studied happiness for 20 years.
Having to connect virtually isn’t totally without benefits — it makes it possible, for example, to connect with far-flung friends and family one wouldn’t typically include on a guest list for a local holiday party, says Lyubomirsky. But video gatherings tend to drain energy from participants, unlike in-person gatherings, which can have an energizing effect.
In fact, Lyubomirsky says she often prefers to connect by phone because it allows for greater intimacy. “There is a little bit of a delay on video — even if it’s microseconds, you still notice it. On the phone, you can talk over each other, which is more natural. Linguists have shown that good friends are talking over each other all the time; that actually it’s a sign of good friendship.”
“The fear is that if the numbers start going up with respect to infection, the numbers are going to go back up with respect to anxiety.”
HAYLEY HAMILTON SENIOR SCIENTIST AT CAMH