Dear Friends,

This Thanksgiving will be a holiday unlike any we’ve ever experienced. With COVID-19 upending daily life and grim rising infection and death tolls, traditional celebrations seem like quaint relics of a different era. We recently issued a Stay-at-Home advisory in Mount Vernon and I urge all of you to rethink your planned events. Getting together poses an undue risk and may endanger those we love and cherish most. Instead of large in-person celebrations, be creative and share virtual time with loved ones.

If we embrace this time of shared sacrifice, follow social distancing rules, wear masks, and minimize our contact with those outside of our immediate households, eventually we’ll be able to gather again. The promise of safe, effective vaccines and national protocols is on the horizon, and with it a return to our cherished traditions, hopefully in time for Thanksgiving 2021.

Our celebrations this year may be different, but the spirit of the holiday remains the same. There is always something to be thankful for, particularly during this unprecedented time: faith and family, health and strength, and our hopes for the future.

Even now, my heart is filled with gratitude. I am grateful for us, our strength and resilience, our courage to stand together in the face of disease and death and support each other through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through our challenges, Mount Vernon continues to evolve and transform. Our march towards progress and prosperity continues.

I wish all of you a joyous, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving. As we adapt to our current realities, let us also prepare for a future brimming with possibility. This is a time to cherish the positive, to focus on our collective strength and compassion as a city, and as a country. United, we can overcome any obstacles. Forward together.

Sincerely,

Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard