This ‘Carry On Christmas’ will claim lives if we’re this selfish – GP Taylor

What I hate the 
most is the fact that everything makes you feel you have to push the boat out, be happy, have a big family do and enjoy the time at all costs.

Those dreaded TV ads show smug families in jumpers, clustered together around a steaming bird, with joyous jingles playing in the background. After all, it would seem that Christmas is the most important celebration of the year, even in a pandemic.

It is a god that has to be worshipped and adored no matter what the cost. Even Boris Johnson has fallen under the spell that everything has to be done so that the population can have a ‘normal’ Christmas. Why?

Why is Boris willing to sacrifice yet more people on the altar of Covid, just for the sake of allowing families to gather? Doesn’t he realise that what he is doing is akin to turning on the floodlights during the London blitz? If we hug our elderly relatives on the 25th we may be burying them on the 15th of January. Is that really the price we are prepared to pay for a ‘normal’ Christmas?

Listening to the news, I get a sense that there is a panic in the populace. Britain has been in the grip of a dire medical emergency since March. It is something that will continue until next summer. Thousands and thousands of people are dead. Families have been destroyed, jobs lost, lives ruined.

Yet we still don’t seem to get the message that normal life is now over and the new way is that we will only beat this disease if we are prepared to make sacrifices. A traditional family Christmas should be the first thing to go.

Just for one year, can we not go crazy, over indulge and party? Do we have to pretend everything is normal? I really thought that an attack on our society of this magnitude would bring out the best in people, yet it has brought out the worst. You only have to look at social media to see that the toxic bile and vitriol has increased.

There is a simmering anger, just under the surface of life, that is ready to explode. Because of social distancing, a lot of people have lost their moral compass and anything goes. Selfishness is pushed to the fore and everyone wants to press their needs before others.

Last week I listened to the radio and heard of a man from Kent who was going to visit his mother in Manchester at Christmas ‘come hell or high water’, and nothing was going to stop him. He was one voice of many on the programme who said the same thing. It was the common consensus that they had all suffered and a few days off at Christmas was still not enough.

Do people not think of what life will be like in January if they have a carry-on Christmas? Has our country descended into a pit of Yule stupidity? Think about it as you sit next to your granny, silently infecting her with C-19.

Large family gatherings will result in a higher infection rate and then a higher death rate. It will always be in the back of your mind that irresponsible behaviour at Christmas killed off a relative three weeks later. It is as stark as that.

Having a toned-down Christmas doesn’t mean it will be a miserable one. From my own experience, due to a bitter divorce, I know what it is like to endure the 25th without seeing your children. It hurts, but 
you can come through the other side.

This wonderful season can still be celebrated and enjoyed even if we do not have mass family gatherings. Surely, for the sake of the nation, we can put our desires for a blow-out aside?

Not everyone celebrates Christmas. I wonder what those people who were forced to celebrate Passover, Eid or Diwali at a distance this year think about the outcry for normality? As do I, they have every right to wonder why this festival has been treated differently and given more importance than theirs.

Earlier this year, Professor Chris Whitty, the Government’s chief medical adviser, urged Muslims to “adapt the celebrations” around physical distancing rules. He said: “The reason we must all do that is, this is to protect the whole community, all communities and all of us must find ways around this, of whatever faith.”

So, what has changed that makes Christmas so special? Is a mutiny of mums wanting to have their family around them so terrifying that Boris caved in to demands? If we are not careful, it might not be just the turkey that loses its life this Christmas.

GP Taylor is an author and broadcaster. He lives in Whitby.

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