If you’re smart (or at the very least, considerate) you won’t be traveling to see family for the holidays this year. Older adults (i.e. your parents and grandparents) are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 while young people (like yourself) have been known to be asymptomatic spreaders of the disease. The only way to truly keep one another safe is to stick it out alone until a vaccine is widely available for all.
Families have been trying to find workarounds for celebrating the holidays during quarantine. For some, that’s meant Zoom gatherings. For others, it means sending extra gifts. For a couple of Texas grandparents, the regular ways of creating closeness weren’t good enough. Instead of trying to connect virtually, they sent their grandkids life-sized cardboard cut-outs of themselves.
Missy and Barry Buchanan sent 6-foot replicas of themselves to their family to act as their stand-ins for holiday gatherings this year. Their daughter, Mindy Whittington, was not expecting them. (Leave it to grandparents to just drop by without notice, even in inanimate form.)
“My mom had told me that she was sending a large package for the Thanksgiving table,” Whittington told GMA. “We were just in stitches, we could not stop laughing. We were not expecting 6-foot cutouts of my parents.”
In addition to reminding Whittington’s kids that their “Ama” and “Poppi” love them and would be there to celebrate if it were safe, Whittington says the faux grandparents serve another purpose: “It’s a reminder that there’s still something to laugh about.”
What do you think of this newfangled form of togetherness? Is it cute? Creepy? Kind of intimidating? We kind of like this idea of sending a cardboard cut-out in our stead to all our family gatherings. Can we do this even after the pandemic is over?
Cover Photo: Facebook
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