On Doing the Right Thing at Christmas.

‘Cancel Christmas!’ is the only memorable line from the 1991 movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves in which our iconic English hero, complete with American accent, travels from the south coast of England to London, stopping en route to rest at Hadrian’s Wall. (That’s about the equivalent of travelling from Calais to Paris via Vienna.) It’s spoken by the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham (the incomparable Alan Rickman) who is being dastardly merely for the sake of it because he doesn’t even have Covid-19 to blame.

And that’s the point. Will we be following his example and cancelling Christmas this year? The news is carrying dire warnings from experts that allowing Christmas to proceed as normal will have very serious consequences for the health of the nation. So does it matter if we cancel Yuletide for once?

Well, not to me it doesn’t. I don’t do Christmas for reasons I’ve explained ad nauseum on this blog. But suppose I were a child. I would have been devastated as a kid if I’d had to endure a Christmas without all the trimmings and the visit from Santa Claus at the very witching time of night. Christmas was as magical as magic can get, and no amount of disingenuous explanation from half-baked parents along the lines of ‘Poor Santa Claus is a very old man, and old people are especially at risk from the pandemic. He could even die, and then Christmas would be gone forever’ wouldn’t have carried much weight with me because I’m selfish like that (or rather I used to be; I’m trying to be a better person now as you very well know.)

So should we all endeavour to have a proper Christmas for the sake of the kids? Lets' face it, Christmas is all for the sake of the kids anyway, isn't it? Unfortunately no, because if the worst were to come to the worst and either granddad or grandma succumbed to the dreaded corona, the poor kid would have to spend the rest of his or her life weighed down by the knowledge that they’d personally despatched one or more of their ancestors. As things stand, kids only have to suffer the weight of knowing that their parents lied to them all those years because Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist, which probably isn’t as bad.

So let’s cancel Christmas for the sake of the kids and tell nice Mr Scrooge that he was right all along. That’s my vote for what it’s worth. Take it or leave it.