Residents keep Thanksgiving plans small, close to home

This year, everyone has an easy answer to Thanksgiving’s traditional “What are you grateful for?” question.

“We’ll just be thankful we’re still kicking,” Fort Seward resident Annette Smith said.

For many, this Thanksgiving will be a smaller affair than in past years, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of large gatherings with family from far-flung parts of the country, many are limiting gatherings to their immediate households or social circles.

“It’ll definitely be a smaller turkey this year,” Smith said. She said in past years, turkeys have tended to be 24-pounders to feed gatherings of roughly 20. She said she expects there will be eight people at her Thanksgiving meal this year.

“We have our COVID bubble, a few friends we feel comfortable with. We’ll gather with them for Thanksgiving, which is kind of what we’ve been doing all along when we want to socialize,” Smith said.

In addition to keeping gatherings small, many families are forgoing normal Thanksgiving travel plans due to the pandemic.

“We told the kids they shouldn’t come home, that it wasn’t worth the risk,” borough clerk and interim manager Alekka Fullerton said. “For the first time in my life, Michael and I will have Thanksgiving home alone, the two of us.”

The pandemic is leaving many vulnerable members of the population isolated from friends and family this holiday season.

“I am sad to be away from my mom, who is in the Pioneer Home in Juneau,” Bamboo Room owner Christy Tengs Fowler said.

Pioneer Homes aren’t admitting visitors due to COVID-19 risks, meaning this year, family members won’t be able to attend the home’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner, Fowler said. She said she plans to call her mom on Thanksgiving and sing her Christmas songs to mark the holiday.

In Haines, social services organizations that typically host communal meals on Thanksgiving –Haines Senior Center and the Salvation Army–are, instead, distributing individual meals to the people they serve. Staff at the organizations said they fear the change will mean loss of the holiday’s community spirit.

“A good share of the people that came to meals in the past didn’t necessarily need the meal, but they really needed the fellowship and didn’t want to sit by themselves on Thanksgiving,” Salvation Army Captain Kevin Woods said. He said a lot of the people in this category are senior citizens.

In an effort to maintain the holiday spirit, some residents are creating new, pandemic-friendly Thanksgiving traditions. While a socially distanced Thanksgiving makes it harder to meet face-to-face with friends and family, for some it has provided an opportunity to connect with those in faraway places in a way they might not have otherwise.

“We’re going to do a family reunion Zoom with my blood relatives,” Nelle Jurgeleit-Greene said. “In a normal year, we might call, or we’ll just text message. I like doing the Zoom because it keeps us closer. By not seeing the faces, the distance can grow but seeing faces keeps us close.”

Jurgeleit-Greene said this year, in place of a face-to-face gathering, her family in Haines is doing a food exchange.

“What we’ve always done for the past ten-plus years, we get together and everyone brings their part of the dinner. We want to limit that this year, so what we’re going to do is we each make what we’d bring, share the items, but we won’t eat together,” Jurgeleit-Greene said.

She said they ruled out a traditional Thanksgiving meal due to COVID-19 concerns.

“There are health concerns in part of the family. Limiting our contact with each other just feels safer because we all interact with different people over the course of the day. This way, we won’t be sitting around exposing each other,” Jurgeleit-Greene said, adding that the plus side of continuing to share the cooking responsibilities is it allows them to justify making a turkey.

Several local food businesses have seen an uptick in sales, spurred by this year’s smaller Thanksgiving gatherings. New bakery Costa Brava is advertising take-and-bake pies for the holiday.

“Part of the reason we decided to offer pies is that in a traditional Thanksgiving lots of family members get together and share the responsibility of making the feast like a potluck. With smaller gatherings, some home chefs may feel overwhelmed with making every aspect of the Thanksgiving feast. We hoped offering take-and-bake pies will allow families to have that home-baked pie without all of the stress,” said Rebecca Kameika, who co-founded Costa Brava with Rachel Deehan this year.

Kameika said sales have been almost triple what they anticipated. She said she and Deehan plan to celebrate Thanksgiving together and use the meal as an opportunity to test a pie recipe they hope to make available around Christmas.

The Bamboo Room is also selling food targeted for smaller Thanksgiving gatherings.

“My husband, Bob, came up with the idea to offer a to-go Thanksgiving, knowing COVID concerns are keeping people home,” Fowler said.

Like Kameika, Fowler reported an enthusiastic response. “We bought enough game hens for eighteen dinners and sold fifteen the first day,” she said. “We had such a good response we added more dinners and are now cooking twenty-seven.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published recommendations for individuals planning to celebrate Thanksgiving. It notes the safest way to celebrate is by limiting events to members of the same household. For those participating in events outside their households, the CDC recommends masking, maintaining a six-foot distance, disinfecting surfaces, and bringing personal food and utensils. Additional information is available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays/thanksgiving.html.