Saskatoon community leaders ask residents to be safe, follow rules this holiday season

Community leaders in Saskatoon are hoping everyone follows the rules this Christmas to help bend the COVID-19 curve.

“Saskatoon, in this holiday season, the biggest gift we can give our loved ones is their health,” Mayor Charlie Clark said in a media release.

“The new provincial guidelines are tough. I hear people struggling with this — and looking for ways to get around the gathering rules. Please, don’t do that. This year will be different, and difficult, but there are ways that we can celebrate the holidays together, and worship together.”

Dr. Jasmine Hasselback, Saskatoon’s medical health officer, says it doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate Christmas; it will just be different this year. That could include holding a virtual dinner.

“(It can be done by) setting up phones and screens around the table and still having that precious time together over a meal, but very much apart,” she said.

Hasselback says it’s important that people stick to their immediate family.

All places of worship must reduce capacity to 30 people, not including clergy and staff. Some places of worship have closed temporarily, including St. John’s Anglican Cathedral in Saskatoon, which has suspended services until Jan. 14.

The church’s dean, Scott Pittendrigh, says not being able to worship at churches this Christmas will be difficult for many. He said it’s not the usual way to celebrate Christmas, but we already know it can be done as places of worship were restricted at the beginning of the pandemic.

“In some ways it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we did this before,’ but it has a different feeling now and we are in a second wave, so there’s a heightened concern. We see the numbers skyrocketing,” he said.

He wants to remind people Christmas is not cancelled. They just need to worship and pray from home this year.

There were 1,248 active cases of COVID-19 in the Saskatoon area as of Friday and 3,736 in the province. There have been 107 deaths province-wide to date.