This Holiday season is indeed very far from last year. The things that we used to do from the last celebrations are restricted. Since there is still a pandemic going on, celebrations become not much enjoyable as it is in the past.
Here in our household, our celebration is very peaceful. In the morning before the upcoming new year, we do have a morning devotion. Each of us read some bible verses in our separate rooms, reflect on them, and pray deeply. After that, we do some groceries for our next week's supply.
In the afternoon, we watch movies together. We spent the time together like this until the evening. We had watched 3 movies until dinner.
We can't invite our extended families to come by because it will be crowded for us inside. Our house doesn't have enough space to support that. They are from outside the household so we need to be cautious. We have no choice but to treat them as a suspected virus carrier since we are currently dealing with this pandemic.
What we did is we called them on a computer via an online app so that we could still see each other faces. We talked and shared each other thoughts until dinner time. We surely missed each other so much but still, we can't take the risk since elderly people and young children are living with us. They are said to be more vulnerable to the virus, so we choose safety over-celebrating it in our casual ways.
We ate and talk about our new year's wishes and resolutions. We discussed whatever plans we can do in the upcoming new year. Of course, that still includes our health care safety.
It seems like we don't have neighbors around us. The condominium building at the back of our house which was full of Chinese people back then was empty and abandoned now. They were always noisy back then and there was no chance in a day that they wouldn't shout at each other but now it is peaceful.
Our neighbors here are also silent. They don't sing aloud on a karaoke machine like last year. They also didn't go outside their houses to lit some firecrackers. It's just like a normal night. There is some fireworks display but it's far away from where we are. Maybe, it is from the neighboring Barangays.
Even though we can't celebrate New Year's Eve like in the past few years, I think there is still something we should be grateful for. We should be thankful for being able to with our family members together. We should be thankful that we are safe from the virus and no one in our family members got infected.
The most important thing, after all, is having a complete family to celebrate with, safe and healthy.
Happy New Year to all of read.cash users here!