What's Your Pandemic Holiday Risk Tolerance?

Among 3,035 adults age 18 and older polled, more than one-third say it has been more stressful to make day-to-day decisions (36 percent) as well as basic life decisions (35 percent) compared to life pre-pandemic. The national Stress in America 2021 survey conducted by Harris Poll also found that 32 percent said coronavirus has them so stressed they have trouble making basic decisions such as what to wear or what to eat.

“Pre-pandemic, most of us had daily routines and some of the decisions were just part of the routine. We didn’t think about it,” says Bufka.

She says perceptions about COVID risk keep changing and that affects “the cognitive load — how much we have to hold in our heads to process the world around us.” 

“Recognizing that, it’s not so surprising that decision-making is more stressful,” she says. “It’s harder to make a decision to do something that has some potential risk to it, even if it has the potential for really good things.”

For Hayley Head and her husband, Tim Glasser, of the Columbus, Ohio, suburb Upper Arlington, the holidays are definitely different from last year.

“We were very cautious,” Glasser, 63, says. “Numbers were going up during the holidays. All our family members understood. We had Thanksgiving dinner at home and did curbside deliveries to our children.”

Head says opening gifts last Christmas took place over Zoom.

“We were alone for Christmas dinner and I sat down and cried,” Head, 58, says. “We missed our family.”

Since then, one son, his wife and 2-year-old daughter moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, for work, but Head says this Christmas, they’ll share the holiday with their other two children and their significant others.

“Human beings, when given the time, are always doing a value exchange, weighing the benefits to them and what they are giving up in return,” psychologist Arathi Sethumadhavan says in an article in the November/December 2021 issue of the magazine APA Monitor on Psychology.

Are you ready to party?

With the pandemic lingering, such judgment calls are different, creating a unique situation, says Baruch Fischhoff, a research psychologist who studies decision-making at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“We have something poorly known and changing,” Fischhoff says of the coronavirus. “This collective experience is unusual.”

Further complicating this holiday season is the return of parties and larger gatherings.

Adam Reeves, 65, and his partner hosted a “tree trimming” party for friends and neighbors at their home in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, a Charleston suburb.

They mailed out Save The Dates for the Dec. 4 party to make sure everyone knew the particulars and could make their own individual risk assessment.

Party host Adam Reeves, right, with guest Jon Gross, asked invitees to consider risks before they RSVPed.

Courtesy Adam Reeves

“I wrote a personal, handwritten note on each one saying there would be quite a large crowd inside and outside and if you’re uncomfortable, please consider before sending your RSVP,” Reeves says.

A high-end restaurant catered the food and a duo played live music, which Reeves says required a “hefty deposit.”

“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t roll this party out, and at the last minute, everyone didn’t freak out and not come,” he says.

A handful canceled that day, Reeves said. But 48 guests congregated inside the home, as well as on the screened-in porch and deck as temperatures hovered in the 60s. Although Reeves’ partner has health issues, the hosts didn’t ask for their guests’ vaccination status since Reeves believes most everyone they know is vaccinated.

That’s what Deb Delacruz Vela, of Austin, Texas, says about the family and friends she sees regularly. But this Christmas, she’s joining extended family in Port Neches, a town in the Beaumont–Port Arthur metro area of southeast Texas.

“For Christmas, I’m seeing my niece and her husband and three kids — two in high school and one of middle-school age and they’re not vaccinated. I have some concerns about that,” says Vela, 66. “I will probably wear a mask when I see them.”

Sharon Jayson is a contributing writer who covers health, family, aging and retirement. As a staff reporter for USA Today, she covered behavior and relationships. She has also written for Kaiser Health News, The Washington Post, Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report.