Like many companies, DADA Goldberg, a New York City real estate and design PR firm, has canceled its annual holiday dinner after a handful of employees tested positive for Covid-19 during the Omicron peak in December.
But the holiday spirit would not be tempered for long. So many events and celebrations had been canceled since the start of the pandemic that the company wanted to “do something,” said Anthony DeWitt, 33, a senior vice president, to make up for “what we lost.”
“We had also given the venue a non-refundable deposit,” he added with a laugh.
So on Feb. 28, after everyone had taken rapid Covid tests, the team gathered at Empire Diner, a hip Chelsea restaurant, for a repeat of a holiday party.
Mr. DeWitt and his colleagues dressed presentably for what felt like the first time in ages. They spent the evening drinking martinis and eating oysters, rib-eye steak, and cacio e pepe risotto. (They chose to skip the gift exchange with white elephants.)
The atmosphere was so upbeat that it didn’t feel strange to be celebrating the holidays two months late. “It felt like a warm holiday dinner,” said Mr. De Witt. “We’ve made it a close thing.”
The Omicron variant arrived in the United States just in time to ruin many holiday celebrations. Now that the tide has passed here, families, friends and colleagues are giving their gatherings another chance: eating the same food, putting up the same decorations and performing the same rituals as they did in December. Some find the late celebrations even more meaningful because they know not to take them for granted.
When the flu and then Covid put off her family’s Hanukkah celebrations, Barbara Blankfeld, 61, a school administrator in University Heights, Ohio, decided she wouldn’t accept another loss.
“When Covid first happened, we missed Passover, and that was hard, and then we missed Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur,” she said, referring to the spring and early fall of 2020. “It was really terrible for me. We are not a big family, but we have our mishpachah,” – the Yiddish word for family or social unit – “and our traditions.”
So one Sunday in late January, she invited her two adult sons, 33 and 28, and their partners, along with close family friends, over for latkes and jelly donuts. Like every year before the pandemic, they lit the menorah together and drank champagne. She handed out presents and even decorated her house with Christmas banners and her special collection of silver dishes.
Celebrating Hanukkah too late made her cherish it even more. “If anything, putting off the vacation makes it more fun because you find a way to make it happen no matter what life has thrown your way,” she said.
As grateful as they were to get together, others felt that celebrating a precious holiday on any given date left something to be desired.
On January 9, Katie McClain, a perfume company owner who lives on the Lower East Side, met her parents at her sister’s home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn for a better late than never Christmas celebration. (A family member had tested positive on the actual vacation; they all tested before getting together in January.)
They ate gingerbread, filled each other’s stockings and opened presents under the tree. (“The tree was still standing, but it was on its last leg,” says Ms. McClain, 36. “We had to remove the ornaments because the branches were too weak.”)
They even told her nephews, ages 8 and 5, that the presents came from Santa. He accidentally delivered them to the wrong place, so there was a bit of a delay, they explained.
As they made the same moves they had on Dec. 25, something didn’t feel right, Ms. McClain said. “Christmas is the only day when it feels like the world is stopping,” she said. “I didn’t get that silence on this random Sunday.” Her brother-in-law was due to go on a business trip later that day, and her cousins both had school the next day.
“The Christmas magic wasn’t there,” she added, saying her family felt the same way.
But there can certainly be benefits to putting off a winter soiree.
Adam Michael Royston, 30, who works for an LGBTQ youth center in San Francisco, has hosted a 200-person holiday party every year at his house with his partner for the past eight years. “We’ve been told that our holiday party is the only thing other people plan their events around,” he said. “We were planning it this year when Omicron hit.”
Since he had to postpone his party anyway, he said, why not wait for the weather to warm up and have a summer garden party instead? “It allowed us to rethink what we really wanted to do,” he said. Plus, “Being outside is good because it relieves people’s fears.”
The bash is now in the works for July, and Mr Royston has already decided on a few details. The six artificial Christmas trees come out of storage and are extravagantly decorated as usual. The gingerbread house decoration activity continues. However, he is not sure about playing Christmas music.
“I think we might go for a more French Riviera vibe,” he said.