THE CHRISTMAS OF TRICKY DECISIONS

So there’s good news. No Puritan Christmas: we can all have festive fun and feasts of felicity, food and family. However, the Prime Minister has today suggested that we do this all very cautiously and very sensibly, and all inside our Christmas Bubbles.

While there will be many who won’t, I reached the conclusion that I should probably isolate next week, so that I get to go to my parents’ house on Christmas Eve with a fair certainty that I’m not carrying the virus. It’s not an absolute certainty, but I think it’s a reasonable one. It’s just a shame that there are lots of things I won’t be able to do while I’m off work. It’s worth it though, I do believe.

It’s interesting how different people react. I’m not altogether sure I like the difference, but it is noticeable and surprising to see it. Some people are super-cautious, some are pretending to be, some are very flippant, and some, worryingly to me anyway, are hostile to the idea that this is actually happening at all. It’s tricky when you’ve got all of those in your family and all of those people want to see each other even if they know they can’t.

And at this time of year! Good King Wenceslas didn’t have to think twice about whether the ‘poor man’ ought to have been wearing a mask, or precisely how far behind him the page should walk with the pine logs, or especially how the ‘flesh’ and wine could be sanitised before they reached Saint Agnes’ Fou-ow-ntain. It’s hardly in the spirit to turn that good cheer away, now is it?

And yet here we are, faced with the Christmas of Tricky Decisions. What could be less cheery? I can’t see my social bubble, my bubble can’t see me. I’ve got a weekend of prior engagements that will require extra-vigilant social distancing, then a week of nowt, followed by a five day festivus with only a small portion of my awesome family.

I think maybe Wenceslas would have worked it out. Perhaps blessing the poor in 2020 is staying indoors, instead of barging in on them with a page carrying an impromptu dinner. Perhaps it’s not accidentally infecting people with a deadly virus, or worse, giving them the worry that they might have infected you! I grant you though, it’s a tricky decision working out how to bless those around us this year.