Turn

[liv]

So, summer is over and England is still completely failing to deal with the pandemic.

27 weeks of staying home as much as possible. 190 days. Slightly under 12 weeks since serious restrictions were lifted.

When I first saw an article speculating that we might have to have the High Holy Days online I was a little despondent. But in just a few weeks it's become completely normal. Now we're expressing the hope that maybe by next new year we'll be back in shul, at least partly. But even that seems questionable.

Reaching September with new cases rising steeply (already 4X what we saw at the start of the month) is depressing. Scary, yes, winter is going to be awful, but on a very superficial, day-to-day mood level, it's hard not to dwell on regret that I didn't do more fun things in July and August when things were relatively safe. I thought the second wave was going to come sooner, with the reopening in early July.

Given this, we made a point to make the most of the last weekend before the new year. We travelled to visit jack's mum, meeting up at Coton Manor gardens which is about halfway in journey time between her place and ours. We took the small risk of using their toilets and ordering food from their café, and being around a fairly large number of people outdoors, in order to actually spend some time together for the first time in months. The gardens are absolutely ridiculously gorgeous; I got dragged round a lot of gardens when I was a kid and thought I wouldn't voluntarily do that as an adult, but Coton Manor is anything but boring. It has flamingos! And really imaginatively laid out gardens with beautiful colours. The weather was perfect too, and we had a really lovely afternoon.

Then the law changed, permitting people to see their live-out partners without social distancing, but also forbidding any gathering of over 6, losing the exception we'd been relying on for two households. We discussed this with our OSOs in the light of the bad infection situation, and the coming bad weather when hanging out in the garden 2m apart will be a lot less tenable. We agreed to pod the two households, including the children because there's really no point social distancing from the children if we're hugging their parents, but to arrange things so that we are always a group of less than six. Which is made somewhat easier since we've agreed that the risk of meeting indoors is acceptable.

And then we started the Sunday school term, still on Zoom although the children are mostly back in in person school. I have made arrangements to tutor one of my yr 5 kids separately, since he was really struggling with Zoom last term, and we had our first lesson in his garden, while the parents valiantly kept his curious younger siblings inside so we didn't end up with an illegal gathering of more than 6.

And then it was Rosh haShana. I had almost nothing to do with the organizing this year; Stoke decided not to hold services at all rather than risk either infecting people in person, or violating halacha by having online services. So I was able to "attend" my own home community, Cambridge, but we continued on Zoom as we have been for the past half year. We considered broadcasting the service from the shul, with only the leading team physically present, but decided against it, and I think that was the right call. The Zoom service felt intimate and community-focused, and we could invite various people to read short sections without worrying about how many people were in a room together. And sad though it is we've got really good at this after more than two dozen online shabbats. Second day tashlich, the ceremony of casting sins into a river, got cancelled because the rule of six came in a few days before the festival. The movement are working on a new prayer book for the HHDs, and I was apprehensive because I'm fond of the old book, for all its masculine default language and its overly heavy font. But the draft new book keeps all the content, but is better laid out and more inclusive, so it's only an improvement.

The Ten Days were in some ways the hardest part of the festival season in a pandemic. The Ten should normally be personal and quiet, but given that I haven't eaten out or gone to a party or even a low-key hangout with friends since March, there was almost no contrast. And also, usually I spend the intervening days preparing for Yom Kippur, and squeezing my own self-reflection into the gaps between preparing things for the community. Not having that should have meant I had way more time to get spiritually ready, but in reality meant I just never really got started. I was invited to help teach a Yom Kippur afternoon study session, with a very senior humanities academic I'm slightly scared of, and we had a lovely conclave in her garden plotting our teaching and enjoying the last of the sunshine.

As pathetic fallacy always tells us it should, the weather became suddenly autumnal between RH and YK. We planned an outdoor, socially distanced visit with doseybat and verazea, and it ended up being really windy and not at all great weather for wandering around a London park. It did me the world of good to see them, but this is definitely a glimpse of things to come over the next few months, when outside socializing is going to be a real challenge. jack organized a small pub meet in a beer garden, again in not really ideal weather but some socializing is needful.

Yom Kippur yesterday was... I don't quite know what to say. It was what I want Yom Kippur to be in most ways, even though my community were inside my computer. It was nice to be at home so that during breaks I could go outside and take a few breaths of fresh air (some nice autumn sunshine returned for the day) without the awkwardness of being in a town full of people for whom the day doesn't mean anything. It was nice to be already at home when it was time to break the fast. I missed my Stoke community, the experience of holding that whole emotionally complicated service. But it was good to hear the tunes from my childhood and some beautifully sung new melodies, it was good to have a liturgy that makes theological sense to me and isn't overly repetitive.

If you are planning to celebrate Christmas, I really suggest you start thinking about it now. You don't know what the law will permit (maybe they'll just relax all restrictions for the festival that the majority celebrate, not like those weird religions that have festivals in September, but maybe they won't, and even if you're allowed to travel all over the country and hug as many people as you want to, will you feel safe doing that?) We're not going to have a vaccine by Christmas, and most certainly it's not going to be over by Christmas in the absence of a vaccine. Prepare yourself emotionally and practically for how the season will work. If you're going to see family, what precautions will you need to feel safe? If you're going to attend services will they be online or in person? For me I feel like we've gone through the two hardest times: Pesach, right at the start of lockdown when everything was scary and uncertain and we were apart at the time which is most family centred. And now Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur, the times when we usually gather the whole community and the services are so profound and essential.

Comments

[el_staplador]

I'm glad you were able to get one day out, at least. Coton sounds lovely. We went to Wimpole Hall on the August bank holiday and I really enjoyed that.

And I'm glad that you were able to celebrate the festivals in a way that was meaningful even if it wasn't ideal.

I'm expecting Christmas to be a repeat of Easter: just the two of us, and church online. We were always planning on spending it at home (first one in the new house) and it's been looking unlikely for a while that my parents could get here. At least, my father refuses to travel in a car with my mother After Last Time and none of us wants him to take the train.

And I've been fortunate in that online church has been working for me in a way that it seems it hasn't for many people. I'd love to go to the cathedral for the first Christmas in Ely, but if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. (And if it did happen and I didn't think it was going to be safe, I wouldn't go.) I think it might be more difficult for the folk who aren't regular churchgoers but do attend at Christmas, and who haven't had a chance to get used to the weirdness.

[liv]

Coton is really glorious. I think they closed from October, and I can't remember if you have access to a car, but it's a really nice day out. I'm glad you made it to Wimpole, I've always been very fond of their gardens.

I'm glad you're getting something out of online church; I know it can be really mixed, both in terms of what the church is able to offer, and in terms of what works for individual members of the congregation. I think you're right about it being harder for the non-regulars; we had to go through a few rounds of people asking, can't we just unmute and sing this one song, and having to explain that no, that really doesn't work, and they went through the same emotions the rest of us did half a year ago when we realized there is no more communal singing.

I hope Christmas at home and online works well for you. I'm quite sure you're right not to set your heart on being able to attend the Cathedral service,

[steorra]

I've definitely been thinking about Christmas. Based on the way my family is handling the pandemic in general, it seems obvious to me that none of us will want or be comfortable with an in-person family Christmas celebration, so I expect we'll do something online. It'll be a bit weird but I don't see it making me too sad, though it'll probably be hard for my parents. We won't be able to do our usual December carol nights, but I'm okay with missing out on those for a year (or even two); we can pick them up again another year when the pandemic is over.

Church is more central to my Christmas than family activities, and that's going to be weird and probably hard no matter how it plays out. My church is doing Sunday services but on a rotation where you only get a turn every 4 weeks. I have no idea how they're going to handle Christmas, but I'm sure it won't be one service for everyone, because that would be obviously unsafe. Will some people get lucky and be able to attend a service while the rest have to make do with streaming? Will they serve several different services and people can attend one of them?

I will probably do something in person with one or two friends - my bubblefriend C and my friend-and-coworker J down the hall, but any details remain to be determined. J and I did kind of agree to do something - he won't be able to visit his family either.

[liv]

Thanks for describing all that to me, it's really interesting to hear what different situations people are in. I admire your philosophical attitude to missing family time and carol nights. It's good that you already have your bubble and will be able to celebrate with at least some people in person.

I hadn't thought of how a church would cope with a rotation system when of course everybody will want to be there for the big day. That's got to be hard for the leadership. Part of the reason my denomination decided against any sort of hybrid services is because we really didn't want a situation where some people are privileged over others in getting to attend, especially for the major festivals. To keep things equal for all, we have gone online only. I don't know how long we will be able to sustain that sense of fairness, though; we may get to a point where a large majority want to be back at in person services, and it's judged safe and is legally permissible to do so, and I don't know if we will hold off indefinitely while even a few people need to stay home.

[anoisblue]

What is a "live-out" partner? We don't have that term in the States. Belated blessings to you for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

[adrian_turtle]

The term isn't much used because the situation is pretty uncommon. Long-term stable romantic partnership usually means moving in together, whether you formalize things with marriage or not.
(I live 3 miles from my girlfriend of 15 years. We haven't used that particular term, but I've found myself doing things like referring to her mom as my 'mother out law.')

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I don't think it's a common term, I'm not familiar with it and I am one of the partners in question. However, as the partner I knew what it meant; it's a partner you don't live with, by analogy with live-in.

[liv]

Thank you! And sorry for using a weird term. 'Live-out' isn't a common term here either, the official documentation says something like 'someone you are in a serious relationship with who is not part of your household'. I'm not sure there really is a word for that, a life partner but not a domestic partner. (Swedish has a pair of words for 'partner you live with' and 'partner you don't live with' but unfortunately the live-together word is a racial slur in American English, so I can't just adopt those.)

Welcome, anyway, sorry for not replying to your earlier comment. Just to clarify, my relationship is a polyamorous quad; one of my partners is my husband who lives with me, the other two are themselves a married couple, whom I refer to as 'Other Significant Others' or OSOs for short. They live together with their children and a third co-parent, whom I refer to using the polyamorous jargon term 'metamour', ie a partner's partner.

[lilacsigil]

We've just been through winter here in Victoria, Australia and it was not great. At least we're coming out the other side now, but it was a hard lockdown. I hope that the lockdowns now spare you the worst of it in the coming winter, but it's not looking promising.

[liv]

Well, thanks for sharing your experience, anyway. Victoria looks to have been particularly grim, though numbers-wise you're much less badly off than here. My aunt works for Safe Work Australia, or possibly WorkSafe Victoria, I get confused, but anyway, she's been involved in pandemic response planning and I see some of her updates on FB.

[kass]

For me I feel like we've gone through the two hardest times: Pesach, right at the start of lockdown when everything was scary and uncertain and we were apart at the time which is most family centred. And now Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur, the times when we usually gather the whole community and the services are so profound and essential

Yes, this, me too. At Pesach I couldn't have imagined that we would still be here now. And yet here we are.

I hadn't thought enough about the extent to which being in a poly household would complicate quarantine pod matters. Strength to your arm; this all sounds extra difficult...

[liv]

Shana tova, and I hope you get some well-earned rest in Cheshvan.

I think in some ways poly can be difficult, but probably no more so than, say, multi-household parenting arrangements. Part of the problem is that the people writing the guidance rarely consider our situation at all, so we have to infer our own interpretations!

(Conversely I was actually strangely touched to see official government guidelines covering tashlich, ushpizin and similar details of Jewish observance; I'm so used to just being bundled into 'other religions' and assumed to be just like Christians except we celebrate Chanukah instead of Christmas. Even though I was sad that they made the decision to categorize tashlich as a gathering, not a service, so we lost what would have been our first chance to see each other in person since Purim.)

At least we have the advantage that we live within walking distance of our partners' household. Even during the very strictest lockdown we were able to walk past each other's houses and wave from the street corner, and that helped me a lot. Couples who live further apart than that have been far more deprived.

[lethargic_man]

Sorry about how hard it all is for you. I wish the UK was half-competent in dealing with the pandemic, as it is here (where even with a rise in cases, the daily number was a third of what it reached in the UK in the last few days, and even less per capita).

I attended shul outside, socially distanced, and with masks when people wanted to sing, and with services radically abridged. This is how it should have been for you/everyone.

I was leyning mincha on YK, and got roped into also leading the mincha Torah service and doing hagbahah and gelilah, on the grounds of reducing the number of people coming up to the bimah. (The olim kept a two metre distance from the omud, as did the gabbai and metaken/sgan/junior gabbai.)

But I also got the stay-at-home experience, because the play room at shul is closed, which means only one of aviva_m and me can ever attend shul at once, whilst the other one stays at home to look after Rafi, and daven beyochid.

[liv]

Yes, and on the other hand I'm glad you and your family are relatively safe in a competently governed country with sensible precautions and no ridiculous restrictions! Outdoor services sounds like the right compromise for your shul; I don't think it would have been lawful here or at least we would have had to apply for a specific permit.

And... I'm not sure the mostly elderly community in Stoke would have managed even a shortened service outdoors and without seating, toilets etc. I don't know, it's academic since the community made the decision to cancel.

It really does sound like you made sensible compromises, though. The lack of childcare is a problem, but having one person cover multiple roles so the bimah doesn't get crowded sounds sensible. Singing outdoors wearing masks sounds much more desirable than solos only over video call. And I miss Torah services. Even my Reform shul where they've fully embraced online davening for now, we aren't reading Torah and I'm quite sad about that.

[lethargic_man]

FWIW, the services start with everyone taking a chair out into the courtyard. (With the exception of the recent run of two-day yomtovs, any virus on the chairs would no longer be viable between services (Friday nights are still by zoom).) And the toilets are still available inside, with signs on saying no more than two people at one time.

As for childcare, children are allowed to play outside; but (a) it would get boring for Rafi, (b) he's too young to run around and keep himself warm like the older children, and (c) it would get complicated with feeding him. (Before the pandemic, we all had lunch together in shul.) It's simplest just to keep him at home, especially as it's a 45 minute commute (without Rafi, longer with a pram) to shul; we moved so as to be within walking distance of the Masorti Kita (kindergarten), but that's a long way away from shul.

[rmc28]

I haven't celebrated Christmas religiously in years, and in the past few years we've been ruthlessly pruning all the cultural/family traditions around 25 December that don't work at all well with autistic people who hate lots of change in routine and big noisy social gatherings. So in that sense, we're all set for a low-key celebration where we only see the family that live in the same city, and this year will be much like last year that way!

We've tended to spread the family get-togethers out through December and January and we won't be doing any of that this year, but then we'd normally have some short visits throughout the year and we haven't had those either, so it's more of the same. One day it'll seem reasonable to take a train and stay in a budget hotel near various branches of the family, but not any time soon. I am resigned to not seeing either of my parents until spring, and possibly a considerable time afterward.

[liv]

Your Christmas sounds much nicer to me than the approach that seems to be standard for secular celebrations. Low-key with local family rather than noisy chaotic huge extended family gatherings, or work parties where the chaotic noisiness and the company are imposed on you, or trying to buy presents for all your relatives when the shops are unpleasantly crowded and loud. And also something that is very compatible with pandemic life, I'm glad you won't miss out too much. But every sympathy on missing spread out visiting with your parents and other relatives.

[rmc28]

The team I work in normally has a "Christmas lunch" at some point in December, and after a series of slightly disappointing 3-course-meals in various pubs around Cambridge, last year we went to Nando's. It was relatively quiet, everyone got to eat and spend what they wanted (within the constraints of the menu), and we still all got to knock off early and go home.

ETA: while reading through the other answers to this post, I have had the bright idea of trying to organise some video calls with the family we'd normally go and see, and to spread those out during the fortnight around the 25 when children are off school. That way we still get to see people, and we also still get to spread the faff/stress/routine change out so it's not all crammed into one very overexcited day for the children.

So thank you for talking about this and prompting that line of thinking :-)

[ewt]

Not being in church for Holy Week and Easter, or Pentecost for that matter, was hard; especially as our vicar decided to focus her energy on the (important!) work of keeping the soup kitchen and food bank going in the face of sudden drastic increased need.

Going to church without music is...strange, but not as bad as I expected. I'm involved in discussion of how to sing safely when we decide to do that (and my bottom line is at least as many precautions as for speaking or they can do it without me).

I'm not entirely sure what we'll do for Christmas. I did run several online carol services a few years ago, and could do that again. If it's still allowed to go to Mass I will be going... again only if the doors are open (and various other precautions), and really if we don't have some kind of harder lockdown imposed again soon it's time to have a conversation with my household/bubble about whether it's safe to go at all, and my own actions will be subject to that of course, the "if it's allowed" includrs if my household decides it's allowed. The lack of available testing makes it difficult to evaluate risk and this frustrates me.

Christmas at home with hairyears and without seeing other family on the day is pretty normal for me by now, because none of my family live near enough for them to see me and for me to also be at church, and when I was working as an organist I couldn't just take off to Canada (or even just go to a church in a different part of the UK if I wanted that) for those services. What will be weird will be not being exhausted by then. Even when not officially working as an organist I usually end up with a few carol services and so on to do during December, and even if I'm only singing the extra travel and rehearsal comes at a time of year when I need more sleep and quiet time, so I usually get to Christmas Day and go splat.

[steorra]

How did your online carol services work? That's a kind of thing I might be interested in when Christmas rolls around.

[liv]

Yes, I can imagine Christmas as a religious professional is a very different experience. I'm glad that you are sometimes able to attend Mass now, both legally and within your own safety parameters. And I'm glad you're coping ok with the lack of music. But yeah, I can just imagine that losing Easter and Pentecost actually in church would have been hard. (Our Pentecost works quite well as a home and video-call based service, but that's much less appropriate for Christian Pentecost.) I hope you enjoy a more restful than usual December at least.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

If you are planning to celebrate Christmas, I really suggest you start thinking about it now.

I'm thinking the opposite. Usually by this point I'd be thinking about Christmas, emailing family, figuring out who's going where on what days. But this year it feels like there's no point planning anything too far in advance because it might all change and disappoint everyone (especially the kids). We don't know if there's going to be a second national lockdown, or local lockdowns either here or where the grandparents live, or if we or they will get symptoms and need to isolate, so it's probably not worth trying to arrange anything until mid-December.

Or, I guess, we could decide now that we're just going to stay at home. But I think I'd prefer to keep options open if possible.

[liv]

That makes a great deal of sense to me. Someone in my social media circles was posting about a close-to-government source reporting that there would definitely be lockdown over Christmas, and I was extremely skeptical, because the government haven't planned anything three months in advance so far, why would they suddenly start now? And besides it makes no sense to plan either lockdown or unlimited interactions months ahead, because you don't know what the disease situation will be.

When I was advocating thinking about Christmas in advance, I really meant, being mentally and ideally practically prepared for the possibility you might not be able to celebrate in the ways you normally do. I, and a lot of the Jewish community, were somewhat in denial over the summer about the prospect of still being stuck at home for our major festivals. I hope it proves unnecessary, I hope you will in fact be able to visit family and enjoy the season properly, but either way, your approach of waiting until you know the situation is very sound.

[(Anonymous)]

We're not going to have a vaccine by Christmas

And there's no guarantee we'll have one by next Christmas, either, of course. Or the Christmas after that, or the one after that or the one after that…

I'm taking advantage of what might be the last chance to leave a Britain that's going increasingly grade-A mental and spending this weekend in Stockholm.

As for Christmas, I'm hoping to have had the virus by then so that I can travel without fear of spreading it. But given the low levels of it around here, I'm not sure if I'm manage; in which case I'll have to play it by ear.

[liv]

Hm, I could see the argument for wanting to catch Covid and get it over with early on, when we didn't know about the long-term health effects. Now we do know about them, I am very keen to avoid the disease, even if that means years without family get-togethers. I am much more scared of my life being restricted indefinitely due to post-viral illness and disability, than of my life being restricted currently by precautions to avoid infection. Good luck anyway, I hope your Stockholm weekend was pleasant.

[(Anonymous)]

I hope your Stockholm weekend was pleasant

It was. Fascinating city, a lot closer to getting back to normal than we are (it was very depressing to come back to the Plague Lands), but everything you've heard about booze being ruinously expensive in Sweden is absolutely true.

I could see the argument for wanting to catch Covid and get it over with early on, when we didn't know about the long-term health effects.

I'm still not convinced there is good evidence for any long-term effects beyond (a) for those who have it bad, what you'd expect after the body's been through a highly damaging experience, and (b) normal levels of post-viral fatigue etc (I saw something giving a figure of about 2% of those infected reporting symptoms some months later, mostly fatigue, which I understand is a similar proportion to other respiratory viruses or glandular fever, and I'm not scared of getting them so I logically shouldn't be scared of getting this). So on a personal level the ability to travel to see people without risking spreading infection far outweighs that.

And on a general level we're not going to get back to normal until a reasonable proportion of us have had it (waiting for a vaccine is a hope, not a strategy) so as someone at low-ish risk it would be selfish of me to go to great lengths to avoid it and so drag the living Hell out for everyone.

But who knows, perhaps the NHS Regeneron trials will go well and by the time I do manage to catch it that will be the standard treatment.