This has probably been an odd Christmas for lots of you, so I just wanted to send you all some good feelings of peace and warmth, like a hot toddy in front of a well contained fire. xx (for anyone not from UK, these are kisses, not just random ‘xx’s. It’s actually perfectly normal to put ‘xx’s at the bottom of a message, and I think you should all start doing it đ )
People have got understandably upset over the thousands of Londoners* crowded into St Pancras last night trying to escape London. Yesterday, travel was banned for Christmas in the south of England with 8 hours notice. Previously, there were repeated promises that that definitely wouldnât happen, so everyone made plans and promises and then had eight hours to fulfil those plans and promises, leading to scenes like the above picture.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/london-tier-4-packed-st-19491286
With our new mutated virus, this could be catastrophic, and I’m seeing a lot of anger towards the people who travelled, but not enough with the people who caused all this. And since the virus started so much blame has been turned on individuals making stupid decisions, which hasn’t helped at all. The argument I keep seeing from anti-maskers is âItâs all about personal responsibility.â âStop telling me what to do, leave it up to personal responsibility.â And then from the government âThese people arenât using personal responsibility, whatâs wrong with them?â For example:
âThe Government should allow us to take personal responsibility in the ongoing battle against Covid, not put us on the naughty stepâ
Julia Hartley Brewer from a Telegraph headline.
âHealth secretary Matt Hancock has warned that ministers will fail to get the new strain of coronavirus under control unless the public take personal responsibility for preventing its spread.â
From the Independent
And itâs bollocks. Utter utter bollocks.
Because these people in St Pancras ARE using personal responsibility, that is exactly the problem. Their personal responsibility is to their families, their mental health, their happiness. They’re trying to get home to fulfill their personal responsibilities, but in such a panic that it doesn’t occur to them that lots of other people would do the same or how disastrous that might be.
What these people need is group responsibility, social responsibility, and that isn’t (in our individualistic society) so easy to come by, especially in a crisis.
Thatâs why we need a government, to control society in times of trouble so that our individual needs donât take over. We need them to make calm, logical, consistent decisions so we know what to do. Instead we’ve had vague, rambling, ever changing decisions that are so ludicrous it’s led to constant doubt that the virus even exists despite 1.6m deaths worldwide.
From the people I know who are trying to do the right thing, I keep hearing the same cry. They say, âI need someone to tell me what Iâm supposed to do for the best,â and more importantly, âI need someone to tell the people Iâm letting down that it is for the best.â Because this situation is complicated and unfamiliar and no one can agree about what’s going on we each cling to what makes sense to us personally. It’s the work of our government to think in terms of the country as a whole, we can’t do that.
But in order for our rulers to be capable of that, they have to have social responsibility. We need a prime minister who isnât acting purely with selfish, panicked (or disaster capitalist) interests and can instead make decisions that benefit the people of the country heâs responsible for, no matter how difficult. That’s the role he chose to take on.
We need a leader, not Bojo the clown.
* Actually, they probably arenât Londoners if theyâre going North to get home for Christmas
I found Secret Santa fun at first. Tashinda got me a fluffy turkey hat that made gobbling noises, and Malcom made a clay ashtray, delicately painted with flowers. It didnât matter that Malcom’s Secret Santa recipient didnât smoke or that Iâd never wear the hat again once Christmas was over, that isnât what Christmas is about, it’s about fun and happiness. So Secret Santa was great for the first two years, but then things started to change, it started to get competitive. People stopped keeping to the ten pound limit; no one specified a new limit, just that ten pounds wasnât enough. Then everybody started using sparkly wrapping paper and ribbons on the presents, even though you canât recycle either and they just get thrown away. Last year, in the big pile of shiny presents tied up with curly ribbons, mine stood out as the only package sellotaped together, in cheap red paper with bells on, and everybody laughed at me. But at least I didnât get Dennisâs present.
Dennis is scary. Mostly heâs just sarcastic, but that can bubble into rage. Itâs difficult to know when, it could be someone sitting in his spot in the canteen or a splatter of tomato sauce on the floor. Everybody is too frightened to leave unwashed mugs in the sink anymore, or crumbs around the microwave. And then when we passed around the Secret Santa gifts at the Christmas meal last year, Dennis smashed his new mug in fury.
âWhat is this?â he screeched.
Tashinda said nervously, âYou donât like it?â
âItâs thoughtless tat!â shouted Dennis. âThis could be for anyone! Thereâs no thought in this, thereâs no effort!â
So this year, when I pulled Dennisâs name from the bobble hat, I felt my stomach drop into my shoes and I havenât rested since. What can I buy him? Heâs not my friend, I donât know what he wants.
I woke up at two in the morning, fretting. I tried to calm down by writing a list of all the things I knew about Dennis and possible presents: likes custard creams (buy twenty packets), doesnât like it when people leave crumbs in the kitchen (dustbuster), has neat beard (beard trimmer). No present seems thoughtful enough. So, unable to sleep, I went looking on his Facebook page. I discovered he liked Metallica and is a member of a biker group, but he doesnât have a motorbike. He often wrote bitchy lectures to people he called âA waste of oxygenâ, people who needed to âStop whining and starting winningâ, this made me more nervous. I searched a bit harder, googling various nicknames he used for himself on his wall, following the friends he had, the groups he was part of.
If you really pay attention to what people write on social media, itâs not that difficult to pull the threads together. You can find forums they write on anonymously, Instagram and Twitter accounts under different names, even old Myspace pages theyâve forgotten existed. So thatâs how I found out that Dennis writes poetry about his feelings. He started as a teenager, but hasnât stopped, he just keeps it hidden. Iâm normally a pretty mild-mannered chap, I donât like to ruffle feathers, but I kept thinking of Tashinda looking crestfallen after Dennis broke her mug, and soon I was thinking: maybe if I frame his cheesiest poem, or find a photo if him posing as a teenager, maybe that would be funny. So I kept looking, and found more poetry, more blog posts about how lonely and misunderstood he was, but as dawn came round, I didnât want to laugh at him anymore. I felt that all the bluster and complaint was a way of covering up for feeling unhappy and out of place, which are things I know quite well. I felt he needed a hug more than to be mocked.
I wasnât with Dennis when he got his present, but I heard he liked it. I got him a book of Sylvia Plath poems and Ten Simple Steps to Happiness. I was told the books made him smile, and thatâs what Christmas is all about.
Hereâs to the Rebel Christmas!
Hereâs to all of you who do Christmas your way. And all of you who donât, but want to.
There are many rules for Christmas: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, crackers, decorations, cards. And then the rules within the rules about how to do each of those things. It can end up being exhausting and stressful, instead of merry. For me, the best Christmases have been when Iâve abandoned the rules and found a new route through the festive season. A rebel Christmas doesnât have to be anything fancy, it just has to be what you and those youâre spending it with, truly want.
Whether itâs huddled around a two-bar fire with your loved ones, with the only decoration a Christmas Cabbage tree (with tinsel); or on your own, eating chocolate pudding in the bath and singing along to the radio; or a rowdy drunken family Christmas shouting at the telly, the turkey, and each other.
My favourite Christmas was also one of the toughest. I had just moved to Mexico City with a guy I barely knew. We had had plans of finding work, but Christmas is not a good time for that, so we found ourselves broke and living in one hotel room. The streets were filled with sparkling coloured lights, but unlike home, these lights all played Christmas songs in bleeps, most of them slightly out of tune, all of them clashing. We saw Santas climbing up the side of buildings, reindeer on rooves. We went to markets and saw row upon row of little white Jesuses, and then row upon row of little black Jesuses. Mexico City loved Christmas. it was fun, but also threw into sharp relief the fact that we had no idea what we were doing or how it would work out.
We couldnât afford to go to restaurants, and were living off cake; mountains of cake. We even tried the ham and sugar glazed doughnuts that the bakery sold (an incredibly inventive place). My companion, letâs call him Spider, got sick a few days before Christmas. So I found myself venturing out into the polluted, bewildering streets of Mexico to find something to cheer him up. I found strawberry yoghurt and a bookshop that sold books in English. I bought some spy novels and a Mills and Boon.
On Christmas day itself, we had a feeling of fearful doom and displacement, but together me and Spider fought the blues and spent the day reading our new books to each other in silly voices. We treated ourselves to a meal (with vegetables!) and the TV was showing the film Night at the Roxbury. Itâs not the most sophisticated film ever, but it was just the kind of daft, joyous nonsense that we could deal with. We werenât sure we were going to survive Mexico, but we were sure as fuck going to enjoy Christmas.
(note: we did survive Mexico, itâs an amazing city and once Christmas was over it wasnât so difficult to find work.)
So to everyone making their own celebration, whatever you call it, however you do it, Merry Delightful Christmas to you. Relish every small delight on this day, when all the usual humdrum stops and can be replaced by whatever.
inkbiotic 