I am very sorry, but I need to talk about the Baby Boomers.
Trust me, I know that Americans are tired of hearing about the 73 million or so Baby Boomers. I know this is true because I am a Boomer and I’m tired of hearing about us. As a 66-year-old gravity challenged male with asthma, it seems like every time I turn on the television there is an advertisement about some medication that I may or may not need — soon.
Then there is the coronavirus pandemic and that pushy #BoomerRemover trend in social media. However, it’s certainly true that millions of Boomers fall into multiple COVID-19 risk categories.
This brings me to a sobering think piece that ran the other day in the New York Times by former ABC News religion correspondent Peggy Wehmeyer, whose byline will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.
On one level, this was a piece about Thanksgiving. But it also points forward into the entire holiday season, underlining many of the painful choices facing Baby Boomer grandparents, their children and, yes, their grandchildren. Here’s the double-decker headline:
‘Gram, Are You Sad?’ This Year, We’re Spending the Holidays Alone
None of our grandchildren will be at our table for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But the pandemic winter still leaves room for the imagination.
Yes, there are valid news stories hiding in this piece and some of them are linked both to religious rites and to family traditions that, for millions, are linked to religious seasons. For starters, what will happen to Midnight Mass? In my own tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, what happens to those glorious meals breaking the Nativity Fast?
Wehmeyer turned to the fiction of C.S. Lewis for a powerful image for what is ahead and what millions of people will be feeling in the weeks ahead. Emotions will really be running high during the Christian season of Christmas, which begins on Dec. 25th and runs for 12 days.
As Covid-19 cases in my city climb to record levels and county officials warn the vulnerable among us to shelter in place, I feel as if I’m living in the cursed kingdom of Narnia, in C.S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” In Narnia, it’s “always winter and never Christmas.”
Like Americans everywhere, my family and friends have begun planning for the holidays. Some will ignore the Covid curse in our midst and gather anyway. My husband and I are battening down for a long winter.
When my 3-year-old granddaughter recently came over to play, I blocked the door she usually enters into the house. “Sorry, Eliza,” I said, stooping to her eye level, “we have to play outside from now on.”
She looked stunned.
“Why, Gram?” she said. “Are there germs in there?”
That isn’t a memory that will warm the hearts of millions of Baby Boomers or their families.
As Wehmeyer puts it:
“Is this my grandchildren’s world now? A place where even their grandparents’ home isn’t safe? Will they look back at holiday photos and wonder why Gram and Pops weren’t there?”
Now, what’s the solution, if there is one? Many a story will be written about this — dividing America into those two familiar campus: (1) People who do everything they can to follow the rules and (b) people who ignore the rules.
Is there any potential for life in the middle, some way to honor the CDC guidelines while celebrating as much Christmas and Hanukkah as possible?
What do government authorities say, at the local, state and national levels? What do religious authorities say, including those in traditions that — hello SCOTUS — can’t do sacramental worship on Zoom?
What is possible? What is safe? Can grandparents enlarge their lockdown pods if the adults have been tested and everyone else is symptom free? How big a risk is that? Families will discuss all of this, leading to now familiar debates. Wehmeyer nails that:
Even when it worked, when small pods of us had our groceries delivered and worked from home, the waltzing in and out of one another’s bubbles created stress. When does a leak require a confession?
“Your nanny goes to the college with the Covid outbreak?”
“Are you wiping down your groceries, Mom?”
“Your husband is meeting clients in person?”
Someone tumbles out of the bubble, and suddenly, icy walls separate family members. You’re in and then you’re out.
When will it end?
As Wehmeyer notes, the Narnia tales offer a metaphor for the ultimate theological truth that is hiding here, focusing on an answer that is larger than a vaccine.
This brings us back to Narnia and sacrifices.
When Eliza’s old enough, I’ll tell her how the curse in the magical land of Narnia was eventually broken.
Aslan did it. Eliza’s seen his portrait hanging in my library. Aslan is the powerful lion C.S. Lewis created to fight the curse and make the world safe again.
The Narnia allegory sprang from Lewis’s own childhood struggles with loneliness and despair. Lewis credited his faith with restoring his hope. Aslan is the Christ figure in the chronicles.
While we’re waiting for a vaccine to reach us and end the Covid curse cast on our land, I’ll take shelter from the cold of winter by writing daily in the gratitude journal I started in March during the first lockdown. And I’ll hold onto the hope my own faith provides that even if there’s no Christmas this year, there will be an end to this long winter.
Read it all. It’s poignant and even painful.
But, because of the size and social role of this particular army of grandparents, there are important news stories hiding in this piece, as well.