Christmas not cancelled – but keep it small and keep it short

By Gareth Jones

The governments of the four UK nations have today decided to keep the relaxed COVID rules, in some form, for Christmas – but have substantially strengthened guidance amid rising concern about infection rates across many parts of the country. 

At today’s Downing Street Press conference, Boris Johnson stated that the four nations agreed that they did not want to criminalise people’s long made plans but stressed that “it is vital everyone exercises the greatest possible personal responsibility". He said that the government is asking people to think about whether they can do more to protect themselves and others, adding "A smaller Christmas is going to be safer Christmas and a shorter Christmas is a safer Christmas."

It has seemed initially that the rules will still be relaxed across all UK nations, allowing up to three households to meet between 23 and 27 December. In Wales, however, the Welsh Government announced that rules would be changed to limit Christmas bubbles to a maximum of two households. Meanwhile in Scotland, people are being asked to only meet on one of the five days. For England, the Prime Minister’s advice was less proscriptive, and was focused on asking people to keep the numbers they are in contact with as low as possible, avoid staying in other places overnight and avoid joining crowded areas in the Boxing Day sales.

As someone who typically likes to provide some good news amid the stark warnings, Johnson’s advice for the public to have a “merry little Christmas” was combined with the promise that things will be better by Easter. A point backed up by England's chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, who stressed that we are tantalisingly close to vaccine in the near future. 

So the key message from the government today was that Christmas was not going to be ‘cancelled’ and people would not be criminalised for spending time with their loved ones – but the strong advice is that people should keep it small, keep it short, keep it local and think of the most vulnerable. If the vaccine is successfully rolled out in the coming months (and the government announced that 137,897 people had been vaccinated in the past week) – then perhaps Easter could become the new Christmas.