Yonkers Insider: Westchester County Legislator Majority Whip, Christopher Johnson, 16th District: Giving Thanks This Holiday.

 

Dear Friends and Neighbors, 

Across Westchester and the world, 2020 has been a year of loss and disruption, but it has also been a year of determination and resilience as we have all reached deep within ourselves for fortitude and resolve to carry on, to adapt, to provide for one another.

This Thanksgiving will be unlike any other as we stare down COVID-19's second wave, and head into the holiday season once again being called upon to forego the normal rituals of family and community from which we have always drawn strength.

Some days it seems like the challenges of this pandemic will never end.  But with heartening news about vaccines that are coming, we have reason to believe brighter days are ahead if we just hold on a little longer.

This Thanksgiving, whether we're together at our holiday tables, or joining one another remotely, of course we will remember and mourn those we have lost and their absence will be a hole in our lives that we will always feel acutely.

But let's renew our strength by taking Thanksgiving literally.  Let's give thanks to the healthcare workers who have tirelessly and selflessly been our rock, developing new and better practices for treating COVID-19.  Let's give thanks to the essential workers who have turned up day after day to keep our County and the world running, at great risk to their own health. Let’s thank the teachers, school administrators, staff and parents who tirelessly worked to reimagine how we learn so that our next generation can keep moving forward.  Let's give thanks to the organizations and volunteers who continue to work to confront the problems of food insecurity, health care access, poverty and the digital divide that the pandemic have deepened and laid bare.

Let's honor their work and their sacrifice by our determination to be safe, to do the right thing, to flatten the curve, to hold on just a little bit longer in the faith that our work together and our sacrifice today will lead to a better tomorrow.

Stay safe, stay strong, and Happy Thanksgiving.