To think Christmas should not be treated differently from Eid and Diwali?

[RUNFAST11]

We are hearing the government could allow a few days meeting during Christmas. While I understand this may be necessary, this could lead to spikes of COVID again and put pressure on the NHS (nearly 600 deaths yesterday) we aren't out of the woods yet.

When it was Eid in May Muslims were warned not to congregate and meet other households. A similar message was said in Diwali to have a stay at home Diwali.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

It's not discrimination, we are by statute, a Christian country and have state holidays based around it... and we didn't have Easter so it's not a blanket decision.

We follow the science but ignore it when it is balanced against mental health, economic factors etc. That's why Eid was sanctioned, BAME communities being more at risk etc

And most simply, non of this is wholly logical. It can't be. No country has 100% logical rules about covid. We do what we can.

If you want to break the Christmas regs go for it. But do the rest of us a favour, be very honest with yourselves about your reasons why and your health status before and after! Don't risk your family, friends and neighbours for a sit down get together!

Why was Passover cancelled and Hannuka soon to be cancelled then (so that Xmas can go ahead!)? The Jewish community isn't predominantly BAME?

Has nothing to do with BAME and everything to do with pleasing the masses and disregarding the minorities.

@Vivi0

I will be hosting Christmas for my family, the same as I do every year.

11 people, 5 households.

I really don’t care.

What is it you don't care about? The chance of your family catching it or spreading it? Would you care if one of them died from it as a result of all meeting?

Or is it you don't care about others not getting a day to celebrate together?

@liveitwell agree. It's 100% about pleasing the masses. They know they can't enforce it and police so many idiots at Xmas so they might as well let them mix.
Personally I don't give a crap about Xmas and don't care whether I can see family or not. My baby will only be 10mths so we wouldn't have been bothering with Xmas anyway.
I honestly can't see the problem with not seeing family for a few months, it's not the end of the world.

I live alone and really don’t want to spend Christmas alone as well but IMO the restrictions shouldn’t be lifted. People have had important holidays cancelled - Eid, Diwali, Easter, Jewish New Year, Passover, Yom Kippur etc. It feels wrong to sanction a huge upswing in cases with the resulting deaths or chronic illness in order that family’s can get together for a few days. Hopefully by next year there will be a vaccine available but for this year it doesn’t feel worth it.

Easter celebs already got hammered this year. Christians can rightfully say they had the very first religious festivity hit in covid controls. Some Sikh festival got affected last week too (just heard on radio).

I guess thing about Xmas is it's when a lot of people have a lot of time off work, it's when they can visit loved ones. People have already missed that social opportunity many times this year. Now it comes at a time when the weather is most dispiriting. It would be nice to have something to cheer us up in the darkest point of winter.

England is a Christian country. Christmas is celebrated to some extent by people of other countries who live in UK.I’m a Buddhist. I don’t expect the important days of my religion or my culture eg new year to be celebrated in UK. No one even knows to wish me and we go to school and go to work on that day. So there is a difference between Christmas and Diwali etc

An earlier poster nailed it. Christmas is hugely commercial. Easter was cancelled along with other religions' major celebrations. The Government is not doing this to allow the country to get back to church but to get shopping.

To all the people saying it's unfair, the virus isnt fair. The govt has to come up with a plan that the majority of 65 million people will comply with.

Religion doesn't come into it

This is also a Christian country. And anyone arguing this point must not live here

I live here, & I don't think this is a Christian country. QED, you are wrong.

The Tories are hinted at 'allowing' xmas for the simple reason that if they didn't sufficient people would ignore any restrictions and then realise there are nowhere near enough people to enforce them, leading to many people continuing to ignore the lock-down, leading to a huge rise in infections.

I don't want a so called normal Christmas if we have to pay for it in January with lockdown.
For this one Christmas let's maintain the good work we have done being in this current lockdown

Of course yabu. We are a Christian country

@Goosefoot I appreciate that. I am not saying they should be alone, but mixing young and old is going to be very dangerous and personally it is a risk I won’t be taking.
@Vivi0 you are utterly selfish. I take it you don’t have any family members/friends working on the front line?

@Shuddawuddacudda

Life like this is stressful and there's only so much the human can take. Being afraid of everyone, masks, keeping away from people, fear, no touching anyone, no meeting anyone, no pubs, no craic, no joy, hand gel, queues, security guards policing your every move, isolation, loneliness, misery, sadness, loss, abnormality, none of life's little graces that make life good. If you want to continue like that - off with ya! But most of us do not.

I definitely don't want this to continue. I hate it. Hate not being able to see my parents, hug my friends, go to the pub or pop to the shops, hate having to always wear a mask.

But at work I see both young and old people extremely sick and services on the brink of being overwhelmed. That's with the current restrictions. Without the lockdown I dread to think what it would be like.

I get that it's tiring. It's stressful. But IMO the alternative is worse.

@greeksalad

I don't want a so called normal Christmas if we have to pay for it in January with lockdown. For this one Christmas let's maintain the good work we have done being in this current lockdown

So you'd prefer to be in lockdown over Christmas and free to roam in January is it?

It's a bit fucking pointless locking everyone down over Christmas so that we can come out of lockdown in January. Who wants to do anything in January?? Pubs are quiet, everyone is skint, weather miserable, work continues, no bank holiday, long month until pay day, new years resolutions begin such as diets and giving up drinking etc . Ye, I just CAN'T WAIT UNTIL JANUARY.

'I don't want a so called normal Christmas if we have to pay for it in January with lockdown. For this one Christmas let's maintain the good work we have done being in this current lockdown'

Exactly. People seem to forget it is for a very good reason, to keep our relatives safe. Who the fuck wants 12 people round a table if it then means they all come down with it and granny ends up in ICU. Merry Christmas!

Honestly why can't people just keep it a quiet one this year, put the health of our family over a game of charades and then by next year everyone will hopefully be round the dinner table.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'I don't want a so called normal Christmas if we have to pay for it in January with lockdown. For this one Christmas let's maintain the good work we have done being in this current lockdown'

Exactly. People seem to forget it is for a very good reason, to keep our relatives safe. Who the fuck wants 12 people round a table if it then means they all come down with it and granny ends up in ICU. Merry Christmas!

Honestly why can't people just keep it a quiet one this year, put the health of our family over a game of charades and then by next year everyone will hopefully be round the dinner table.

Exactly.

I won't be seeing elderly 90 yr old parents at Christmas anyway as we are too worried we might be asymptomatic carriers, despite not going anywhere, but it would involve a long car trip and using services.

My hope was that in early January we could visit having not seen them for 4 months. Now, it looks as if that could be delayed and at their age, who knows what might happen before then?

So you'd prefer to be in lockdown over Christmas and free to roam in January is it?

Yes because if we manage to keep socially distant until January the R will be down and we can start to get something closer to normal, gradually.

It's not about whooping it up in January, it's about ensuring numbers are falling and carry on falling so life can get back to normal sooner rather than later AND the vaccine may well have been given to the elderly by then.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'I don't want a so called normal Christmas if we have to pay for it in January with lockdown. For this one Christmas let's maintain the good work we have done being in this current lockdown'

Exactly. People seem to forget it is for a very good reason, to keep our relatives safe. Who the fuck wants 12 people round a table if it then means they all come down with it and granny ends up in ICU. Merry Christmas!

Honestly why can't people just keep it a quiet one this year, put the health of our family over a game of charades and then by next year everyone will hopefully be round the dinner table.

Indeed.

Just because it's allowed doesn't mean it is safe or a good idea.

I would really ask anyone who is considering having a large number of people over for Christmas to look at the risks, you really do no know who has COVID and who doesn't if someone comes to Christmas dinner, even if they don't have symptoms and even if they don't stay the night, they will very likely ass it on - who else is at that table? You might be ok with that risk but what about your elderly relatives, are YOU ok with the catching it, are you ok with the kids at the table catching it? Are you ok with potentially isolating for 2 weeks in the new year when one of your guests has a positive test?

If all that is fine and dandy for you and your guests, then sort of fair enough, though it will have a bigger impact on society as a whole.

I suspect however that some people do whatever they like any way. Selfish twats.

Yanbu OP. And I am a practising Christian.

I just think it's ludicrous to get this far with lockdown measures, to bring the R down and hopefully start seeing drop off in cases and deaths, to then piss it up the wall for a few days - a few days that will then have a tragic follow on effect for many people. I'm stunned at the posts on here saying that they don't care, they'll have several households together on Christmas day. I just can't understand that mentality. Would you care if one of your loved ones then got very sick and died? I know it sounds like catastrophising - I get that. But it's reality, the virus does not care about how fed up you are and how you deserve a break from it all, Covid isn't going to think oh, I'll leave them all alone for five days, they need a rest from me. Instead it's going to rub its hands together in glee.

I think that it would possibly be helpful to allow two households to bubble over Christmas. But to just suspend all social distancing etc seems like madness to me.

@liveitwell, of course it's about pleasing the masses. The 'masses' are the country's citizens and it should be ran to suit them. Given that Brexit is going ahead on a close vote, they can't justify not going with what the people want. What are we otherwise? They don't need us for factory or cannon fodder anymore. Are we just worker drones?

Christmas is a cultural event shared across the Commonwealth and in Countries that had European settlers. We didn't have Easter. We are only asking for the same allowances as was in place on the second Eid and that is for a small gathering. All of our other celebrations have stopped, Panto, Christmas Markets, Nativity, Church Services etc. We aren't calling for a normal Christmas. Even outdoor events have stopped in the UK.

When Eid couldn't be celebrated we didn't know how it was being transmitted and we didn't have treatment pathways. Now we do.

We should have spent the summer planning this lock down. The reduction in services in some parts of the country cannot be justified. We know first time around that for every three people who've died from Covid, two have died from lock down. Children are in that number. If we had decent investment in the NHS and housing/environment/further education (for Social Care roles) we wouldn't be in the position that we are. So I hope people realise that they aren't immune from the effects of government, even if they don't feel them ordinarily and remember this when we next vote.

A lot of people live within 30 minutes of their relatives and dinner is less time spent than those a working day, or travelling on public transport. For those that have to stay over then it is a matter of individual risk assessment, as it is for all of us.

From a religious point of view, you are kind of right (easter ismuch mire important than christmas though).
but christmas in the uk is predominantly a commercial occasion, not a religious festival

Christmas is similar to “eat out to help out”- it boosts the economy, with a significant cost attached (i.e. people dying)

All this virtue signalling really is pathetic.

Christmas is a national holiday. The other festivals you mentioned are not.

It's more about timing. Easter was celebrated online and at home. Christmas is special as a festival more than a Christian/religious time, and even people of other religions often have a family gathering and celebration.