Christmas 2020

December seems to be well underway now, and the dog is getting excited – the tree is up (earlier than usual), there are fairy lights draped over the mantelpiece, and the Christmas cake is ready and waiting in its cake box. Always good signs, as far as the dog is concerned, that presents are on the horizon!

I’m still making an effort to do some writing, but Christmas is a big distraction, and the laptop is getting less and less use as the month goes on. But I’m not worried – it’s like this every December, and I know that as soon as the kids go back to school in January, my box file full of writing notes will come back out and normal service will resume.

It’ll be a different Christmas, obviously, but hopefully still fun, and a welcome break from constantly thinking about the virus and reading about it on the news.

So – from the dog and me – have a lovely Christmas! 

A Relatively Careful Christmas

Everyone seems to be starting to think about Christmas early, this year. And you can’t blame us – we’re just coming to the end of 2020, for goodness sake – we need something cheerful to think about! Christmas trees are popping up earlier than ever before in people’s windows and even in my house, where we don’t normally put up any decorations until December, the tree is already in the living room and I’ve started thinking about putting the laptop and the rest of my writing stuff away for a little while, and getting on with making the Christmas cake.

But clearly, even though the dog is already wearing his Christmas bow tie, Christmas 2020 isn’t going to be a ‘normal’ Christmas – not for any of us.

As I write this, the government has just announced what the Covid-19 rules will be in the UK over Christmas. Households will be allowed to mix with three other households over a five day period, and, presumably, many will opt to spend time with relatives, extended family and friends. It’s the ‘relative’ part of this that seems important to me, though. It can only be ‘relatively’ safe. Not completely safe. After all, there’s still a pandemic going on and Covid-19 won’t be taking a few days off over Christmas, like many of us humans will hope to. Even though the vaccine will be rolled out in the UK before Christmas, most people won’t get access to it until well into the new year, and the virus will still be hard at work, infecting as many people as possible.

It’s all about risk. Many families who haven’t seen grandparents, siblings, aunts and cousins for weeks or months, and who are in the habit of having a big family celebration at Christmas, will see it as an acceptable risk to take. I’m definitely not in their camp – but then, I’m a fan of quiet Christmas’s, anyway. But even if I wasn’t, I’d still be very wary of meeting up, indoors, with two or three other households at once. This is potentially going to be quite a lot of people inside an average-sized family house, all sitting close to each other on the same living room sofa while they watch Christmas telly, breathing the same air, and squeezing in extra chairs around the same turkey-laden table. Scientists have already said that it is almost certain that more people will die in January than would otherwise have been the case, as a result of families mixing over Christmas.

I just really hope that next year, Christmas 2021 will be different, and families will be able to meet without worrying about the consequences.

So – whatever your plan for the festive period this year – enjoy it – and take care.