UK Edition
Boris will have had his eye on one role in this year’s Covid Christmas panto, and it won’t have been Captain Hook, the Wicked Queen or Ebenezer Scrooge, pre-enlightenment. No, our PM will have been thinking more in the vein of Bing Crosby in White Christmas, Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street, Clarence Odbody in It’s A Wonderful Life, Will Ferrell in Elf, Bill Nighy in Love Actually, Billy Bob Thornton – post-epiphany – in Bad Santa.
He will have wanted to don the white fur and red velvet suit, the wide black buckled belt and the fleecy beard. He will have been dreaming of flinging those sweeties out into his grateful audience – and the headline: “Boris Saves Christmas!”
But a day after the “Christmas Plan” the PM was expected to reveal made headlines – with not just two but possibly four families possibly being allowed to meet indoors from Christmas Eve through to December 28th – the PM took on a more cautious role in his Commons address. “We all want some kind of Christmas,” he said from isolation. “We all need and we feel like we deserve it. But what we don’t want is to throw caution to the winds and allow the virus to flare up again forcing us to go back into lockdown in January.”
The exact details of his Christmas Plan were not revealed in that statement, but the PM did confirm plans to allow a “time limited dispensation period” for the UK this Christmas. Because “in a period of adversity, time with our loved ones is even more precious for people of all faiths”. Which is all well and good, but if an estimated two-dozen people are going to be able to meet indoors for a period of five days, who is going to save us from Christmas?
For almost 10 months the country has been reduced to a kindergarten by this pandemic, with the rules and regulations we’ve been forced to live by turning us into a flock of high visibility vest-wearing schoolchildren, being shepherded through a joyless new world by some sour-faced matron.
We couldn’t shop, eat, drink, socialise, exercise or even love one another as and when we’d like, and our language too regressed to toddler-talk. Are we “allowed” to meet, “permitted” to hug, “authorized” to share a packet of crisps? So what happens when, after all that time, the Norland nannying state lets go of our hands? Do we remember the reasons behind those rules – or do we run straight out into oncoming traffic?
Granted, that open road never looked so good. Once a week I perch on a £9.99 fold-out stool on the pavement outside my parents’ window, where we have a stilted conversation through the mobile phones glued to our respective ears. I haven’t been in the same room as them let alone hugged them since February. So yes: a five-day “doesn’t count ‘cause it’s Christmas” bonanza is the stuff of fantasies.
But a fantasy is what it will remain for me and my brothers. Because the Covid-battling cavalry’s coming: it’s up there on the crest of the hill. And how cretinous would we be to endanger the people we love most in these last few weeks and months, simply because we’re “allowed”?
I know what the counterarguments to my stance will be, and they all boil down to “but it’s Christmas”. Oh you mean the celebration of the Saviour, Jesus Christ? Let’s unpack that. We are now the fifth least Christian country in Europe, with the number of Brits identifying as Christian having fallen from 66 per cent to 38 per cent according to a British Social Attitudes survey done in 2018.
Long before Covid threatened to cancel Christmas, British businesses had stopped sending Christian themed cards, councils had vetoed public trees, and cinema chains had banned an advert containing the Lord’s Prayer; all for fear of offence. So you’ll forgive me for questioning whether religious fervour is at the heart of most peoples’ insistence on a “normal” Christmas this year.
OK, but even for atheists or whimsical believers, Christmas is about family, isn’t it? And I realise I’m far from being the only one who has been reduced to tears by the stories of the lonely, care-home-bound aged, the disabled and the vulnerable who have been holding out for this single moment in their pain-filled year.
But those longed-for safely conducted reunions are not the problem here. It’s the groups of people who would be allowed to mingle at close quarters that would be the flaw in the sentimental scheme we’ve been told to expect. It’s the binge-mentality all these months of deprivation will have bred. Because many of those people won’t be socially distancing.
They’ll be revelling in their window of normality, which means hugging and drinking and karaoke-ing. And all for what? As our PM says, we don’t want another month of lockdown in January any more than we want further extended periods of isolation, or even more lives and jobs lost.
Maybe I’m being a humbug. But whatever the finer details of the Christmas Plan turn out to be, this is our chance to prove that we no longer need to be hand-held: our very own “marshmallow experiment”. Because as with Walter Mischel’s 1972 study on delayed gratification, there might be a quick treat up for grabs, but it was those who stuck it out a little longer, you’ll recall, who reaped twice the reward – and longer-term benefits besides.
You can read Celia Walden’s column every Monday from 7pm at telegraph.co.uk. Click here to read last week's column
Boris might save Christmas, but have we forgotten how to save ourselves?
The virus isn't going to take a festive break – just because we are allowed to mingle for five days, it doesn't mean that we should