65. IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE COVID-CHRISTMAS - Re-Thinking The 2020 Festive Season

Since March we have been in and out of various stages of lockdown. We already saw the corrosive effect in May of a single person - Dominic Cummings - breaking the strict protocols that were imposed up until then. As soon as the hypocrisy of having to stay isolated and away from our friends and family while politicians broke the rules with impunity became clear, the majority of people across the country decided they could no longer be bothered to follow even the most sensible of rules. Very soon the lockdown was “eased” and for all intents and purposes, other than the appearance of masks on people’s faces some of the time, life across England, if not the rest of the UK, seemed to return, at least superficially, to normal. High streets became busy again. Houses became crowded as fa. In restaurants people were encouraged to “eat out to help out”. By September everyone’s children were back at school, acting as if nothing had happened despite the sudden appearance of hand sanitiser in every doorway and open doors and windows in classrooms.

And the infection rates soared once again.

Hospitalisations.

Deaths.

Forcing, at the end of October, the government to once again impose a national lockdown on the country to get the R-rate under control.

That this second lockdown is working is questionable. Schools remain open and there, at both primary and secondary levels, infections continue to grow. Certainly my morning commute seems just as busy as it ever was. But in wider society, those who are following the new lockdown rules have taken some of the pressure off the NHS and less interaction between people is keeping infections somewhat at bay. The situation, however, is far from over and it is highly doubtful we will be in a situation on December 2nd where it would be safe to return to the summer’s pseudo-normality (which, frankly, wasn’t safe then either). There remains a possibility the second lockdown will be extended; even a slim possibility of it being transformed into an actual lockdown for a few more weeks. And yet, looming a month away, is the big reindeer in the room, finally being discussed by politicians this week: Christmas. The time of year when, traditionally, we take a break from all the rules and relax, get together with family and friends and let it all hang out. Celebrate for days, if not weeks, throughout December. All things which , under either the current lockdown restrictions or the previous tight restrictions of the ill-fated tier system, are things we are no longer allowed to do. Mixing families inside homes, overnight visits no-less; multi-generational without open windows; sat by an open fire and breathing the same air…the yuletide scene becomes a potential horror movie at the moment of the first cough. Granddad passes some unfortunate, sprout-aided, noxious wind and the camera closes up with building music on Aunt Veronica as she realises she cannot smell the hideous odour. She cannot smell anything at all…

Despite the fact that we have seen Islamic Eid celebrations twice have to adapt to the new normal this year and Muslims deny themselves their usual shared celebrations and, more recently, the celebration of Diwali passing with Hindu, Sikh and Jain communities accepting the reality of the second lockdown, for some reason the public narrative suggests Christmas to be somehow different than these other religious festivals. That while all these other things may have had to compromise in 2020, a year where Christmas is affected by this pandemic would be a step too far.

Now it is true that the mass commercialisation of Christmas makes it differ from those other religious festivals in that many people of all faiths and none celebrate it. In my atheist household, for example, Jesus’ birth is as relevant to our enjoyment of the season as the Easter Bunny is to a Christian’s observation of Easter, and in the school where I teach many non-Christian children each year enjoy wearing a jumper with a snowman on it and eating a turkey dinner. Despite the clever branding in the name, Christmas has become more of a what it once was in pagan times - a non-denominational celebration of winter and a collective stand against the darkness and cold of this time of year with the weapons of light and love - than a celebration of the birth of Christ. Christmas is different from Diwali or Eid in the UK because it is so all-pervasive it becomes a part of everyone who lives here’s December whether they want it to be or not. Whereas far fewer non-religious or differently religious people observe those other celebrations each year, whoever you are in Britain in December you have to co-exist with the same playlist of familiar songs blaring out from every shop and radio, the flashing lights, the Santas, the adverts, the snow-infused idents on every television station. The shops close. The schools close. It is definitely a thing which is hard to avoid, and as such we all have developed ways of coping with Christmas either positively - by celebrating it - or negatively - by ignoring it with our own alternative traditions. The general norm though, unless working that day, even if the thought of a virgin birth never once crosses our minds and we say “humbug” quicker than Ebenezer Scrooge, because everything else is closed and it is expected, is to at the very least spend some time at home with our families. More often than not the whole, extended family will get together if possible. And, as humans have done throughout their history, those families - or friends; friends are family too - will share food and drink together and enjoy each other’s company with the ease and intimacy that comes with being part of the special “inner circle” who have agreed to spend this special gift of unfettered free time together.

When people say they don’t want COVID 19 to ruin Christmas this year, what they mean is that they want to be able to visit their friends and family in peace this December. They want to be able to share a big meal and stay overnight without worrying about sanitising everything they touch and constantly washing their hands. They want to see each other’s whole faces, not just their eyes and foreheads. They want to be able to hug and kiss and not have all the bloody windows open. But more than that - they want their Christmas parties. They want to go to the pub and have their annual drinks with friends old and new. They want to go to restaurants for their Christmas meal. They want to eat mince pies and gingerbread lattes and catch up on the year gone by and look forward to the year to come. They want to buy presents and see the looks on people’s faces when they open them, not log in to a Zoom meeting to watch them open an Amazon package delivered by a stranger.

And I get that. I do. But - and this is important - still nothing fundamental has changed with COVID-19. Yes, a vaccine seems to be on its way, but it isn’t here yet, and when it is. it is not a vaccine everyone will have access to immediately. The R rate is still far too high. The hospitals are still struggling. People are still dying. Our elderly and clinically vulnerable relatives are still at risk of being killed by this thing. We still might be asymptomatic carriers of a death sentence to someone we love, or a stranger we don’t but who doesn’t deserve to die from our negligence. We therefore still have a moral responsibility to cause as little unnecessary harm as possible, even at Christmas. We still need to socially distance, to wear our masks, wash our hands, etc. We therefore need to face up to the fact that, no matter how badly we might want it to be, Christmas this year shouldn’t be any different from any of the many other sacrifices we’ve collectively made since March - birthdays, weddings, holidays, jobs, travel, religious festivals... 2020 sucks. We all know it. COVID 19 has ruined a lot of things this year and will ruin more yet. That Christmas needs to be another one of those things COVID will ruin is just something we need to accept and prepare for.

So my way of preparing is this: rather than wish things were normal and get disappointed that they’re not, I will consider the following things.

1) Not everybody celebrates Christmas. This year you get to feel what it is like to be these people. More specifically you get to feel what it is like to be someone from a marginalised community who really wants to celebrate something the way they used to back home but cannot make it feel the same way in this strange new environment. Putting ourselves in the shoes of such people might help us develop compassion for and understanding of others. A restricted Christmas this year might make us think differently in future years about those people who feel alienated every December 25th and what we could do to make things better for them.

2) Some people really love Christmas but find themselves scarred by personal circumstances and unable to enjoy it. Calls to people like Samaritans increase every year around Christmas time. Those unable to participate in happy scenes of family life they crave because they have no friends or family of their own, or no home, or no money to buy into the image of Christmas sold to them on TV, suffer through the month of December while the rest of us celebrate alienated by circumstance and made to feel incomplete and inadequate. If this Christmas you do have people you wish you could share it with and who would share it with you were it a normal Christmas, be grateful for that instead of sad. Call them. See them on Zoom. Celebrate the fact that you are lucky enough to have that. Raise a virtual toast and be thankful to your circumstances alone together. Donate the money you would have spent on excess food and drink enough to feed an army to mental health or homeless charities instead. Be grateful you have a Christmas celebration to miss and feel that gratitude.

3) Remember we never have any guarantee of a good Christmas anyway. We may be ill one year and spend Christmas in bed. We may meet some personal tragedy at Christmas time that ends the holiday season with a visit to the hospital or worse. We might just have a bad year, as many people do. The reality not quite meeting the expectation in our heads. Or life stresses not getting the message that this time of year is supposed to be jolly and keeping us up all night regardless. Or maybe it’s just our bad luck to get the Christmas shift and we spend the day at work ensuring others can have a good time. There are all kinds of ways Christmas can be ruined (one year my mother decided to make a statement about her failing marriage through Christmas gift-giving. Under the tree there was a giant wrapped box for weeks before the big day and my younger sister and I were so excited about what might be inside. On Christmas Day she insisted that present be left for last and when it came time to open it we could barely contain our excitement. I unwrapped the box only to find another, slightly smaller box inside. We opened that box and found another. And another. Eventually, all these boxes ended with a small, final box, and inside the box a note which simply read: we should love each other more as a family. Not even the imaginary sprout-farts of my earlier horror film scenario stank as badly as that gift, and the mood in the room afterwards was no less grim than that in which Aunt Veronica reveals she has lost her sense of smell). The good news though is that, barring a terrible accident or illness (see point 2), most of us will have many Christmases and, as Billy Bob Thornton says in the Christmas movie, Bad Santa, of a disappointing advent calendar, “they can’t all be winners”. So just accept 2020 Christmas is going to be one of those underwhelming, disappointing Christmases. A series of empty boxes with a sad note inside. Hopefully next year will be better. Or the year after that. And we still have the memories of last year to enjoy. They can’t all be winners. Imagine this just happens to be the Christmas you slipped in the snow and broke your leg and spent the whole day in hospital…except instead of suffering a broken leg and hospitalisation you get to plan ahead, buy in some nice food, and just have a lovely day at home in your bubble. You can even watch Home Alone or Elf and murder a turkey like always.

Which brings me to thought 4):

4) Christmas isn’t actually going to be cancelled even if the lockdown or tightest restrictions remained. We can still do 90% of what we would do any other year. We can decorate our houses, take time off work, eat good food, watch dumb movies, sing and listen to the same familiar songs and do all the regular Christmassy things we’d do any other year except physically see friends and family, who we can still see online. In fact, when you break it down, considering that we can still do all the home-based Christmas stuff and remotely visit with all our friends and family, the only thing we can’t do safely this Christmas seems to be go out and drink and eat with each other. But we already know that going to busy restaurants and pubs is dangerous in this pandemic; that’s why they were closed during each lockdown, and why the R rate grew once they were open again. In these times which are just not normal of course we’ll lose some normalcy around Christmas, as we have lost normalcy everywhere else - but don’t miss the forest for the trees and lose sight of all the things we still can do just because of the things that we can’t.

The Grinch who steals Christmas this year isn’t COVID 19, it’s the mindset that is so rigid about what Christmas has to be it can’t conceive of doing things differently. Keeping Christmas 2020 safe doesn’t ruin it. It just alters it, bringing it in line with all those other strange and muted celebrations impacted by COVID 19 this year and giving us something to remember once this virus is behind us. And personally, I would rather look back on this as the year I had to eat pasta for Christmas dinner because I couldn’t book an online delivery, or the year we shared cracker jokes over FaceTime instead of in person, than as the year we killed Grandma because we failed to face up to the reality of our situation, or overwhelmed the NHS so much that thousands of people unnecessarily died.

Author: DaN McKee

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