Kevin Hermanek crossed his legs while sitting in a wheelchair and peered out the tall first-floor window of a senior living facility in Lincoln Park where his daughter waited outside — the closest the two could get on Christmas Eve.

As light snow swirled overhead, Margaret Hermanek set up her headphones, dialed her 66-year-old father’s cellphone and struck up a holiday conversation about relatives, entertaining television shows and what items she would put on hold for him at the Chicago Public Library.

Though it’s no replacement for the typical Christmas Eve dinner that’s become a family tradition, the Hermaneks relish the moments they can share together — even if separated by a pane of glass. To put her dad in a festive mood, Margaret also dropped off a bag brimming with cookies, holiday cards and games — Santa’s version of no-contact delivery.

“It’s a little weird, but it’s the best that we can do, and I’m glad that we’re able to do it,” Margaret, 33, said through a plaid-patterned face mask. “He feels like he’s missing out because that’s just his frame of reference and he doesn’t realize that everybody out here is going through some version of not seeing people and not being able to do things.”

For most Chicago-area residents who observe Christmas, this year’s holiday is like no other in their lifetimes, with traditional gatherings of loved ones in homes and churches curtailed, modified, Zoom-ified or done away with altogether, along with meals and exchanges of presents.

Many are still trying to count their blessings and make the best of things.

For Chicago resident Arnold Park, family holiday gatherings were limited this year to dropping off presents at the front doors of loved ones with brief, masked and socially distant visits standing outside. He and his wife, Tanya, and their children, Sebastian and Elena, made a quick trip to Michigan to check in on Tanya’s parents and give them a chance to interact with the Parks’ two new puppies, Baby and Maui, who joined the family a couple of weeks ago.

“We treated ourselves to two brand new puppies since we knew would be spending an inordinate amount of time at home this winter,” Park said. “Our family dog of 12 years, Bear, passed away in November and we were going to wait some time for a new dog, but the grim news and weather motivated us to get the two new puppies.”

The Parks also planned to make a Christmas donation of food and treats in honor of Bear to the rescue where they got him. That was another curbside drop-off, as the rescue center wasn’t allowing visitors.

It’s also one of the many charitable efforts that continued unabated, if modified, on Christmas Day around Chicago, with houses of worship, along with social service groups and community activists, handing out meals, COVID-19-related supplies and other needs for those struggling this year, in some cases for the first time.

The organization Ombudsman Chicago said it responded to the overwhelming need it saw at Thanksgiving by joining with other community groups to provide free toys, meals and COVID-19 supplies to families at Legends Chicken and Fish on the South Side on Friday. Chi-Care said it planned to deliver thousands of meals to homeless people around Chicago on Friday.

Romel Murphy, 42, had the blueprint of his organization’s Christmas toy giveaway planned out to a T. Around noon, speakers were to boom with a playlist ranging from Mariah Carey to the Jackson 5. A purple Christmas tree, representing his late mother’s favorite color, was set up to greet families in the doorway. A Black Santa Claus as well as Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters were on hand for photos with children.

And piles of at least 400 toys, collected through donations to his nonprofit, Equality Should Be Normal, as well as the Jack and Jill Lake Shore chapter, waited to be unwrapped by excited children.

Murphy, a Bronzeville resident originally from St. Louis, founded his organization in June because the devastation of the pandemic and the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, spurred Murphy to want to dismantle racism and government disinvestment on the South Side, he said. That starts with giving something back.

“I just want to carry that torch and pay it forward,” Murphy said. “That’s how we change the cycle and we fight to eradicate racism: by building generations on generations of youth and strong Black men and women that want to create change.”

Murphy has repeatedly heard from neighbors who have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic and are coming to his community center for the first time in search of food, coats and hygiene products — “stories of desperation,” he said. He believes many children may not expect lavish gifts due to the financial crunch many parents are under.

But for him, this year’s Christmas will feel more uplifting than years past because he believes the toy giveaway will ease some of the burden on families to provide Christmas cheer.

“A lot of parents, we make sacrifices for our children,” Murphy said. “My goal is to allow parents to focus on the necessities of food and meals and allow us to meet the warmth of Christmas for their kids, so that way they won’t go without a meal to give their kids a toy to open on Christmas. We want to fill that gap.”

For South Side residents Mollie and Juan Rojas, Christmas plans were fluid because he works as a critical-care physician at UChicago Medicine. Because both he and his wife, a dentist, work in health care, they have not visited the extended family in months.

“Recently, my husband got the vaccine, and I am hoping to have it in the near future so we can more safely interact with family,” Mollie Rojas said.

Celebrating Christmas this year, then, involved Zoom calls with loved ones, lots of baking and special meals to share with their son.

Throughout her husband’s training, “he has often worked on the holidays, like so many other essential workers, and we just make the best of it,” Rojas said via email. “Growing up, my father was a fireman, so our family is used to improvising during the holiday season as he often had to work on either Christmas Day or Christmas Eve.”

Kevin Hermanek and his wife normally host relatives at their home in the South Loop, where she still lives, for the holiday. On Christmas Eve, their small family gathers to open trinkets, listens to him play the piano and faces off in a game of charades after dinner.

But this year, Hermanek wouldn’t be leaving his assisted living facility — Belmont Village Senior Living — and everyone planned to connect through a Zoom call instead. Guests are not allowed inside his building due to high infection rates in the city, and residents are discouraged from exiting.

Despite the changes, he said still looked forward to the holiday.

“I like to talk to my family,” said the retired attorney, who moved to senior living about two years ago due to health and mobility issues. “We don’t get together real often, so it’s a treat just to have some time together.”

On Thursday, Hermanek wore a thick red sweater — his favorite color — and sipped on a Diet Coke during the “window visit,” as the residents call them, with his daughter. While he stayed warm inside, his daughter pushed her gloveless hands into her coat pockets to shield them from the 16-degree weather.

As the pair talked, trucks clanged down a busy Fullerton Avenue behind them and pedestrians strolled the sidewalks, sometimes stopping to watch with their dogs or children.

“This is going to make us all appreciate Christmas a little bit more,” Kevin Hermanek said. “When you take away all of the trappings, all the fancy, frilly add-ons and get back to just getting together with family ... it gets back to what’s important about Christmas.”

This year, Mark Kosin, also known as “Uncle Marky,” didn’t let the pandemic stop him from figuratively being with his 5-year-old goddaughter, Evelina, and her twin sister, Vivian, for Christmas, even if he lives a couple of time zones away.

After some planning, a photo shoot with a co-worker, and $150 for shipping, Kosin arrived at his best friend’s house in Orland Park just in time for Christmas morning. Except, that version of Uncle Marky was made of cardboard.

“The girls thought it was funny and cute. I even got a stupid speech bubble that said, ‘Ho, ho, ho! It’s Uncle Marky,’” Kosin, 36, said. “If nothing else, it just gives me another leg up over the other uncles and aunts in their lives. I hope I raised the bar.”

Kosin has been best friends with Nicholas Del Priore, 36, since they were college roommates at Loyola University Chicago. After graduating in 2007, Kosin moved to California but continued to come back to Chicago for the holidays.

This year has been more challenging for Del Priore and his wife, Kelly, as the parents of two kindergartners. They were concerned about how the pandemic would affect such an important educational milestone, but the twins have been resilient, they said.

“Once they adjusted, they haven’t looked back,” Nicholas said. “Because of their age, they are not searching for the way things were. They’re living with the restrictions and with the knowledge that at some point it will be over, and they’ll move forward.”

The girls have been able to attend their private school in person since August. Nicholas and Kelly have also been able to work from home during the pandemic. The girls catch up with Kosin over FaceTime. Their Thanksgiving was spent with just the four of them.

“It’s sort of best worst-case scenario,” Kelly said. “We’re obviously super fortunate to be in that position, which we do not take for granted in the slightest.”

The life-size cutout of Uncle Marky arrived the night of Christmas Eve.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s not a great photo. I didn’t clean up that much for it. It was just like on an average day after remote work,” Kosin said. “Very kind of ad-hoc, on the run, 2020-style stuff.”

On Christmas morning, the family — including additional relatives who had self-isolated for the last two weeks — wore matching long-sleeved Christmas pajamas that Kelly picked out.

The girls closed their eyes for the gift and cutout reveal. Vivian jumped up and down and Evelina had a huge smile on her face, said “Oh, Uncle Marky!” and ran over to hug it and try to replicate their piggyback rides.

The family took selfies with it and sent them to Kosin, then gave him a call. Still, Kosin and the Del Priores said they wished they could have celebrated again together, but they now have “a new terrifying tradition” and plan to keep Kosin’s cutout to scare their other friends when they plan to stay in the future.

“This is difficult and terrible,” Kosin said, “but if we can use a little hope and ingenuity and kind of get through it with that sort of mentality, then I think we will come out in a better place when, quote, unquote, this is all over.”