In a year when nothing has gone as planned and we’ve learned to expect the unexpected, it should come as no surprise that holiday celebrations were going to be a challenge. As important as wearing masks and social-distancing is for our physical health, maintaining some semblance of our holiday tradition and finding ways to promote celebration and joy is important for our emotional health. The Student Council and Ms. Scheffler agree and have been working hard to ensure we had some sense of joy from MHS during this hard time. 

Student Council planned lots of different events and, whether you’re hybrid or fully-remote, definitely were able to feel the holiday cheer. They held an ugly sweater day and took pictures throughout the day and made a really big display of them, including virtual students (myself being one of them). Some of these students also took advantage of a Zoom feature where you can change your background so they will be suggesting to change it to something holiday-esqe to create the wonderful seasonal spirit. Also new for this year, was a gingerbread making contest outside at lunch. Each grade had one builder and one coach, and the whole event was filmed the whole event for students to watch on Instagram.

Of course, even though a lot of things changed, there were still many of the classic holiday events. For instance, there was jingle links, holiday music playing and name-that-tune as always. There was also discussion about the potential for the fun tradition of candy-grams again this year. 

In the event that we had switched to a fully virtual option, although different, there was still effort to spread holiday cheer throughout our school. Carol Scheffler outlined the contingency plans if we’re fully remote. Earlier this December, she commented, “We won’t be able to decorate the halls obviously, but we could hold a gingerbread making contest virtually I believe, we can do ugly sweaters and virtual backgrounds, and we can do our virtual game night, and we can’t do candy grams. We’ll have to get a little creative, pivot to come up with some new things.” In any case, we can be confident that she and the Student Council would have definitely lifted our spirits around the holidays even if our school was forced to close due to COVID again. 

Also extremely important this year, was the increased needs amongst many in our community. As Scheffler explained,“This year the needs are so great amidst families who are just suffering more than they ever had to in the past, so our goal is really just to raise as much money as possible and send them, as many families as possible, gift cards, we’ll pick up a bunch of local ones, Stop & Shop, CVS, Kohls, and there are different organizations that are distributing those to local families. So we really hope everyone will be generous with jingle links and get into that competitive spirit.” So remember, participating in jingle links is both fun and supporting a good cause!

Regardless of what format, the school successfully ensured we had a jolly holiday season even in these crazy, unprecedented times.