You will, no doubt, have heard the concerns of various people who have been puzzled why their own religious festivals have been reduced to Zoom calls whilst Christmas, the biggest British festival of them all. is going ahead as some kind of normal. Diwali, Eid al-Fitr, Chanukah – they all became socially distanced affairs, but Christmas? We can’t stop that, can we? Not if the newspapers have their way, we can’t.
The headlines say it all. ‘Carry on Christmas’, shouts the Mail. ‘Johnson refuses to revoke Christmas Covid freedom,’ thunders the Times. ‘Too late to cancel Christmas’, the Telegraph informs its elderly readers. ‘The Fight Before Christmas’, storms the Sun as Boris Johnson battles ‘to keep five day bubbles’. And the Daily Express announces that ‘PM will defy pressure to cancel Christmas’. Boris the national hero, batting off the pleas of those wretched experts who want to spoil our fun.
The headlines could be oh so different. ‘Get pissed with the family and kill granny’, might not have an attractive ring to it. Or ‘Ignore those pesky virologists and epidemiologists who want to piss all over your Christmas crackers just because the NHS will be overwhelmed in the New Year’. And freedom, for goodness sake. Whose freedom? The freedom of someone on an induced coma on a ventilator in an ICU? I’d like to know how that granny’s freedom has been protected by allowing, say, asymptomatic grandchildren to breathe a deadly virus all over her?
If we are to believe Honest Bob Jenrick this morning, the rules – the actual laws of the land – are merely some kind of guide. People should “use their own judgement”, says the Communities Secretary, perhaps assuming that we are all experts on the virus. In which case, those people who ignored the rules and got heavily fined – can’t they say “Well, I was just using my own judgement”?
Going back to my original point – I knew I’d get there eventually – why were other festivals carried out on line and Christmas goes ahead pretty well as normal? There is one very big difference: unlike other festivals, for the vast majority of people, Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with religion. When we erect and decorate the Christmas tree, exchange presents, eat Christmas dinner, drink vast quantities of alcohol and sit down together as a family to ask the same question – “Why on earth is such a terrible programme like Mrs Brown’s Boys on peak time television on Christmas Day, or any other day for that matter?” – this is not some reference to God. Christmas, which I absolutely love, by the way, is all about family and nothing to do with the supposed birth of a baby to a virgin woman.
I appreciate that for other religions, their festivals are about the various Gods and religious customs and I am happy for them to go ahead. And the reality is that the restrictions that applied this year to their festivals are largely the same as those applying to Christmas, apart from that five day period when we can all get together, get shit-faced and spread the virus. If the truth be known, the only reason Johnson has agreed to the relaxation of the rules is because many people will do their own thing anyway.
I shall certainly bear in mind the government rules over Christmas and take them into account when making my decisions as to how to behave. I will not be visiting elderly people, nor those with underlying health conditions, not least because to some extent I come under both categories. I won’t be going to pubs and restaurants, unless they are open, that is.
Boris Johnson is being presented by the gutter press as some kind of superhero who is fighting to save our freedoms. I don’t see it like that at all. I look at a shambolic Pound Shop Churchill impersonator whose dithering at crucial times has been responsible for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of deaths. He has presided over an economy that is suffering from one of the worst and deepest recessions on the planet. Millions will lose their jobs in the coming year and many of them will discover the horrors of not being able to feed themselves or their children. Johnson is nothing but an ambitious lying opportunist and shyster and that’s without the coming hard Brexit, deal or no deal, that will hang over Britain like a dark cloud of hopelessness for a generation.
“Carry on Christmas” until January when Britain will probably be back in a national lockdown, which in truth feels little different from Tier 3. Who really sees a different scenario for 2021?
In the words of the great comedian Dave Allen, may your God go with you.
