Rachel Elphick
It would have been a lovely occasion, for those who celebrate Christmas. Having toiled through each and every wave of hardship and despair 2020 has thrown at us, imagine if we could have gathered together with all of our loved ones, eaten good food, drank mulled wine, and sang along with Michael Bublé’s Christmas Album until the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, deadly pandemic viruses don’t seem to care much for Christmas cheer, or the movie-style happy endings we humans are such suckers for.
Boris Johnson would have done well to learn this lesson back in the summer. Promising Britain a more ‘normal’ holiday period and then leaving the wondrous gift of Tier 4 in all the Christmas stockings of London and the South-East is a festive kick in the teeth more than anything else.
People’s family plans were scuppered left, right and centre with barely a week’s notice, as heavy-handed restrictions attempted to clamp down on the new strain of COVID now widely prevalent around the capital.
Yet even with these new restrictions in place, there was still a Cummings-style mass Exodus from London, law-breaking that was triggered almost certainly by the lack of warning Londoners were given about this new, drastic change to their Christmas plans.
As Government U-turns go, this is more of a handbrake turn, considering how days before this announcement, cancelling Christmas for anyone was deemed ‘inhumane’.
As for the rest of us, it was left to individuals’ judgement once more to make
our own choices for Christmas Day, at least at the time I write this. Though
at this point, who knows? Boris could change his mind again tomorrow and
lock us all down completely till January, and the majority of this article would then appear heinously out of touch.
Or in other words, ‘Dear Britain, which would you like to prioritise? Your family’s physical health, or their mental health? Lots of love (for your Christmas spending) the Tories xx’
With what we have been told thus far, though, families across the country have nevertheless been left with a festive dilemma: Would we feel more guilty if we accidentally brought COVID-19 into our family circle on the singular day of the season we’re allowed to mix, than if we left elderly relatives out of the in-person celebrations, relatives who may have already spent the bulk of this year alone, or with very few close contacts?
Or in other words, ‘Dear Britain, which would you like to prioritise? Your family’s physical health, or their mental health? Lots of love (for your Christmas spending) the Tories xx’
Not to add insult to injury, but it does feel as if Downing Street is already
preparing to fend off another influx of cases in the New Year, and has been preparing to do so even before pulling Tier 4 out of its back door.
Conservative prioritisation of a ‘normal’ festive season for far longer than
was apparently sensible now feels like eating far too much of your
Christmas Lunch, despite knowing full well you’ll end up like a beached
whale on the sofa an hour or so later, bloated to the point where even the
sight of food makes you physically ill.
Unfortunately, deadly pandemic viruses don’t seem to care much for the preferences of British Prime Ministers, or anyone else, for that matter
If it hadn’t been for this new strain of COVID, Boris may not have planned on ever telling Britain to stop stuffing its face with Christmas, rather preferring to get the metaphorical sick buckets ready ahead of time.
Unfortunately, deadly pandemic viruses don’t seem to care much for the preferences of British Prime Ministers, or anyone else, for that matter. Like a cat in a Christmas tree, baubles will be shattered, our pleads and cries stubbornly ignored, and if the whole thing stays standing, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle.
The New Year is already setting up to be a serious struggle, for families, for the NHS, and for businesses, though I don’t think anyone can predict how
serious the health situation will become, or how much our economy is going to struggle.
This is concerning, considering we will probably find out in under a week. It feels like trying to cook Christmas Dinner using an oven with an unspecified electrical fault.
Yes, we know it’ll probably all go horribly wrong, and Christmas for many will be a little less merry in retrospect, but nobody quite knows how to re-wire the thing and besides, it’s not the oven’s fault it can’t do its job. It’s your fault for buying it in the first place.
Thank goodness there isn’t another allegedly oven-ready disaster waiting to hit at the exact same time. Oh, wait.
Rachel Elphick
Featured image courtesy of Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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