After a year of isolation, celebrations are coming back. What’s it like to get back into the social swing?

REMEMBER BACK, IF YOU WILL, TO THE BEGINNING OF THE PANDEMIC. March, maybe April, of 2020. In those anxious and uncertain days there was at least one thing people the internet over seemed to agree on: When all this is over (they Tweeted and Facebooked and told their friends over Zoom), I’m going to throw the biggest party.

The psychology of the time is already hard to remember but it seems to have gone something like this – the pandemic began quickly and caught us by surprise. Who was to say it wouldn’t end in much the same fashion?

Of course now we know a lot more about what “over” means. We know there’s unlikely to be one particular day, one moment of mission accomplished. And yet, at least here in the U.S., we’re making heartening progress toward a new normal. Vaccination rates are up, case rates are down and health officials keep making announcements about what’s safe, even maskless, moving forward.

So people are starting to throw those parties. Kristen Markus, owner of the event planning company Illusions of Grandeur, offers a droll laugh when asked what the past year has been like for her business. Her 35-year-old company went from planning 10 to 15 events a month to zero, she says. She furloughed her staff, and transitioned to other projects like helping restaurants build out their parklets in order to keep the business alive.

But now, “we are definitely seeing a lot more volume of calls coming in for future events,” she says. The company organized its first big event back (big being relative – it was for the maximum number of guests under public health guidelines of the time, 70) on May 8.

“It was really hard,” Markus says. “Events are a real physical business – it’s like not having gone to the gym for the past year and a half.”

From a safety perspective, Illusions must follow Cal/OSHA reopening requirements, including employee masking, social distancing and sanitation. In addition, the company follows any specific rules set out by the event venue (think hotel or conference center).

Celebrations run the gamut. Postponed weddings are picking up, as are birthday parties and dinner parties and parties for no reason at all. Monterey-based artist Elizabeth Murray decided to host an open studio in May. After the official Arts Habitat open studio tour weekends got postponed again to October, she decided to go ahead solo, inviting people into her house over the course of two weekends.

“My anxiety level was really high,” Murray say of the first day. Both friends and total strangers came through – Murray’s home sits in a garden that allowed people to flow easily between the indoor and outdoor spaces according to their comfort level. Meeting everyone where they are, and allowing them to self-regulate, was important to Murray. She offered hand sanitizer at various places as well as some simple food items like individually wrapped treats or pieces of fruit. She didn’t set a mask policy, but instead allowed people to do what they were comfortable with and trusted their judgement. Some masked, others didn’t.

For many guests, it was very emotional. “There were people who came who this was their first social event since last March,” Murray says. “There were tears.” Over the two weekends, some 200-300 people came through – sometimes in larger groups, other times in a smaller trickle. Some people toured through and left, others stayed for hours. For Murray it was a successful step back toward normal. “I feel like it’s an important gift to the community,” she says.

So maybe our celebrations don’t yet look, as we might have imagined in March 2020, like big maskless bacchanals. Just the act of gathering, after all this time, is a big deal. “I guess it’s about easing in,” Murray says.