Thanksgiving 2020: Traditional celebrations or celebrating new traditions? 🦃

Streetbees Team
November 26, 2020

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, looking back and focusing on the positives of the year is something we should all try to find time for.

Now, we’d understand if you struggle to find something to be thankful for this year - but that’s exactly why we should try. For us at Streetbees, we have a lot to be grateful for - our talented and passionate team, our growing community of bees, the investors who believe in our dream, and the brands who we partner with. Each one of you is dedicated to understanding human behaviour on a deeper level, and we couldn’t be more thankful to have you on the journey with us. 

For those who still need more inspiration, here are just a few of the great things that happened this year that we should all be thankful for:

🐝 A 103-year-old grandma beat COVID-19 and celebrated with a Bud Light.

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🐝 Crayola launched a box of crayons with diverse skin colors for children to “accurately color themselves into the world.”

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🐝 NASA named its Washington, D.C. headquarters after Mary W. Jackson, its first Black female engineer.

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🐝 A 23-year-old British design graduate has invented a biodegradable material made from fish waste that could one day replace plastic in packaging.

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🐝 Kim Ng was named the first-ever female General Manager of a Major League Baseball Team

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Thanksgiving 2020: what’s different?

Our usual celebrations are all having to adapt to the current situation - including Thanksgiving. Here are some of the changes happening and the new traditions that could be coming our way:

It’s about the give and take. With Thanksgiving celebrations likely to be smaller than usual, it’s created a question over whether the traditional home-cooked Turkey dinner is appropriate for the numbers. Over 1,000 restaurants (and growing!) across the US have launched “Thanksgiving To Go” menus as an alternative option for consumers. With the hospitality industry hit particularly hard by the pandemic, could this help save local favourites? Can we expect a similar offering for Christmas, especially as the number of cases in the US continue to rise?

No one’s raining on this parade. The world’s largest parade is having to take a different route this year - literally and figuratively. Instead of its usual 2 mile long journey, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will only be one block long and rather than having 100 people to operate each balloon, Toro tractor vehicles will be towing them. It’s not unusual for the parade to be watched on TV, but due to social distancing restrictions it will now be a ”television-only special presentation”.  Since the 1920’s, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has only been cancelled during World War II - and 2020 is no exception.

Black Friday goes green. Some retailers are planning on donating a proportion of profits made on Black Friday to charity, while others will raise awareness of important social causes. For example, Ella’s Kitchen is donating all profits from its online shop taken between 27 and 30 November to Trees for Life. As the pressure for sustainable consumption increases, is now the perfect opportunity to reclaim Black Friday and turn it into something new? 

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Streetbees’ Always ON platform captures real life experiences, at the moment of choice and in the consumers’ own words - uncovering what really matters to them and drives their decisions. If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch with the team.