The Sunday Post View: Hunker down, stay put, coorie in, count blessings, think of others, and have a merry Christmas

So, our politicians should possibly take a breath before hesitantly promising special dispensation for family get-togethers on the big day. Why don’t we just see how it goes? Take it one day, one week at a time, like we have all the way through the past eight grisly months.

That was us, in this column, four weeks ago today. Now, newspapers are rarely slow at hailing their own prescience and insight but even we can’t claim a world exclusive.

Back then, it seemed everyone and their granny’s granny – possibly, particularly their granny’s granny – was saying the same thing at the same time. So, needless to say, a few days later, our political leaders in Edinburgh and London, after a considered confab, did the exact opposite and gifted us a golden ticket to see families and friends for five festive days around the 25th.

Of course, we had hardly squeezed a paper crown on our heads and got out the Pictionary before we were being urged to take care, to consider the risks. It was, as someone suggested at the time, like being given a blank cheque and being told not to cash it. It was also an almost complete abdication of leadership. Well, yesterday afternoon, our leaders led.

If it seemed loopy then to relax restrictions when no one knew what we might be facing in Christmas week, it seems positively deranged now. Since then, depending on our postcode, we have endured various shades of lockdown, none of which seems to have slowed Covid for a second as our hospitals fill, a new speedier strain is discovered, infection rates soar and experts queue to warn a third wave looms over us, or, more accurately, another peak in the single roiling wave that swept across our country nine months ago and shows no signs of ebbing.

While everyone fervently hopes the vaccine rollout will proceed at pace, there is little else in the news to bring comfort and joy after our politicians yesterday finally told us that whatever we planned to do and whatever it was suggested we might do, what we need to do is next to nothing. Stay in and hunker down is the message.

And the vast majority of us will do what we are told, just as we have done through month after unsettling month. We do it to protect ourselves and our families and we do it to protect others and their families.

That stoic, everyday acceptance of our responsibilities has been both mundane and incredible this year, a seam of community spirit running through 2020 like gold in anthracite.

That is just one of the things to celebrate this Christmas and, despite some dark clouds, bright winter sun will still break through this week and so, if we can, we should enjoy a very little Christmas, think of others, count our blessings, count them again, and get ready to keep on keeping on.

So from all of us to all of you, have a very Merry Christmas.