Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts. This week Frank wants to know…

Has this pandemic altered your holiday plans for later this year, or will it be “business as usual”? Please explain.

So let’s talk about upcoming U.S. holidays.

• October 12 – Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day
• October 31 – Halloween
• November 3 – Election Day
• November 12 – Veterans Day
• November 26 – Thanksgiving Day
• December 10-18 – Chanukah
• December 25 – Christmas Day

I’m going to immediate eliminate Columbus Day and Veterans Day because, even before the pandemic, we never really did anything special on either of those holidays. Election Day is not technically a holiday — although I think it should be — but we’ve voted by mail for the past decade anyway and that’s what we’re doing this year, so nothing is different.

That leaves Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Chanukah/Christmas. With respect to Halloween, I wrote about that in my response to last week’s Truthful Tuesday, so I won’t repeat that here.

Thanksgiving. We usually have our daughter, her live-in boyfriend, our son, and his wife over for Thanksgiving dinner. But not this year. We will all be at our respective homes. We’ll likely chat and play games via Zoom. Whoopie doo!

Chanukah. Although neither my wife nor I practice the religion, we have a Jewish heritage, so we would typically have a Chanukah party at our place, complete with brisket, potato latkes, noodle kugel, and a menorah. Not this year. We’ll probably be chatting and playing games via Zoom. Whoopie Doo!

Christmas. Because we’re not at all religious, our typical Christmas Eve has been spent with family at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant. On Christmas Day, we would exchange gifts before going to a dim sum buffet for brunch and a movie. But this year we’ll probably chat and play games via Zoom. Whoopie doo!

I hope that if Frank asks this question next year at this time, my answers will be very different.