My home town of Peterborough, UK is now in Tier 4 restrictions. This is the highest level of restrictions and is due to the emergence of a new hyper infectious variant of the Covid 19 virus. The timing of the implementation of the tighter rules means many peoples Christmas plans have had to be ripped up.
This will be the first Christmas since Dad died in November and the family can not spend it together. My mum will join my girlfriend and I for the day, but my siblings and my children will not be able to be with us. For us, what was already going to be a tough Christmas just got worse.
That said, we are still the lucky ones. We have been able to buy lovely food to feast on without too much of a worry about the costs. We will give and receive presents and enjoy the day in house of which I am the homeowner. My girlfriend and I are still working, fortunate enough to be in jobs that allow us to work from home, for a company classed as an essential manufacturer. You don’t have to spend long scrolling through Facebook to see the posts of local groups set ups to help those in need. The number of food parcels being prepared for delivery on Christmas Eve is staggering, and unbelievable in one of the richest countries in the world.
Christmas should be a time of celebration and joy, whether you see it as a religious festival or a winter one, but it’s a time of stress and anxiety for many. There is a relentless stream of pressure to have the perfect Christmas, Facebook, TV adverts, Instagram. The pressure to have a perfectly prepared feast after you have opened a mountain of presents in front of the perfectly symmetrical Christmas tree and then posting it all on Facebook for everyone to see. Its really easy to look at these images, look at what you have, then convince yourself you have failed at Christmas. How has the most wonderful time of the year become a financial and emotional millstone around peoples necks!
This year I will have a modest, but not insignificant pile of presents under my tree, but half of them will remain unopened. That pile of presents will represent the family members I can’t see, my daughter & son, my brother and his family. I could have spent £1 or £1 million pounds on those gifts but they are worth the same…nothing. They will remain wrapped in brown paper and red twine until who knows when. The gifts, the tree, the feast…they all mean nothing without the people we love being there to share them with. However, in contrast, the people we love are worth everything even without the gifts, the trees and the feasts. I hope that this Christmas, tough as it is, gives us all a little perspective. I hope it tips the balance of what Christmas is about away from what we have and more to who we have.
Total Wellbeing 