Just for context, I come from a Municipal Waste Clobberin’ Cancer T Shirt that takes Christmas very seriously. We’re not religious; for us it’s just a time to get the whole family together and eat too much and drink too much. But as I’ve grown older I’ve come to realise that we approach it with far more enthusiasm than most. I shall be very sad if we’re not able to do our usual Christmas. But I shall be no less sad than many British Jews were back in April, when they had to celebrate Passover in lockdown, or British Sikhs, who celebrated Vaisakhi the same month. I’ll be no less sad than British Muslims were back in May, when they had to do Eid in lockdown, or than British Hindus were on Saturday when they had to do Diwali in lockdown. Why does my cultural celebration take precedence over theirs? Why are the government being so careful to ensure we are not locked down over Christmas when they evidently didn’t give a stuff whether we were locked down over all the above festivals? These are questions worth asking, and it’s a journalist’s job to ask them. The answer may well turn out to be that all of Johnson’s comforting nonsense about being out of lockdown in time for Christmas was just that, and the reality is that he put another lockdown off until he was forced into it. Or it might be that he made a cynical political calculation and determined that he could afford to piss off religious minorities, but couldn’t afford to piss off the majority.
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