Coming together

When most people hear the word Christmas they think about coming together. The Christmas holiday is the biggest event of the year. For Christians, it’s a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. For non-religious and secular people Christmas is a celebration of gift-giving, dancing, music, colorful tree decorations, and of course Santa Claus and his reindeers.

Between 24th and 26th December most family houses are usually full of extended family members visiting for a short stay. Different people have different traditions and customs they follow. Some traditions, however, are shared by all. Some people cook special meals, other people exchange gifts. Different people decorate their houses with lights and ornaments. Other people put real or artificial trees in their houses and decorate them with lights, wreaths and ornaments.

Fun and good cheer

One thing is certain, having fun is a major part of Christmas and the Christmas spirit. There are countless movies that have been made, which center around a character who tries to suck the joy and fun out of Christmas. Most of the time this character is the antagonist of the film. In the overall Christmas spirit of the movie, the character usually does not succeed in ruining Christmas and the movie ends with a nice montage of singing voices, happy faces and hugging shoulders.

Christmas 2020

This year however, there’s no antagonist to ruin the Christmas spirit. For Christmas 2020, we don’t have Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. This year, we have a global pandemic that threatens to snowball into a catastrophe if people don’t stay away from each other and stay put in their own homes.

Crisis of the Century

To those whom Christmas means a time of coming together, Christmas 2020 is the Christmas Crisis of the Century. With measures to control the spread of the Corona virus including observing social distance at all times and avoiding being in a crowd or forming crowds of people, Christmas 2020 will need to be dialed down or dialed in, if you can afford it.

Don’t risk it

Popular places people frequented during previous years will not be getting any guests this year. Whether by constitutional law or by the law of self-preservation. Nobody in their right mind should be risking catching and spreading the disease which has already killed more than 1 million people around the world so far. There are other ways to have fun and enjoy the Christmas holidays this year.

Good news!

There are positive reports of a viable vaccine that could soon be distributed globally but ‘soon’ does not mean ‘before Christmas 2020’ for most of us.

Stay home, stay safe

The directive to stay home and thus stay safe remains the best way to keep the spread of the COVID-19 virus under control.