MERCIFULLY, the Sydney Northern Beaches coronavirus cluster that held the potential to overwhelm the state this Christmas has been held in relative check.
Yes, there were restrictions impacting on millions of Sydney, Central Coast and Illawarra residents, but the effect was not as dramatic as it could have been, had the Sydney cluster case numbers multiplied more menacingly than they have so far.
Many would have been inconvenienced. For families with members spread interstate or overseas, Christmas often means the chance for once-a-year reunions.
In this year of the lockdown, digital get-togethers are nothing new.
Even if the restrictions meant greetings by FaceTime or Zoom, it was better to say "Merry Christmas" knowing the NSW case total had risen by just seven, rather than the dozens or hundreds that experts had feared as a likely scenario a week ago.
Similarly, while the numbers of people attending Christmas church services will have been down on what would otherwise be expected, the ability to open the church doors at all, and to have choirs singing or bands playing if that was part of the worship, can be taken as a small Yuletide miracle in itself.
Today, on Boxing Day, the region's stores will open for the traditional post-Christmas sales, which will assume more importance than usual, this year, for two main reasons.
The first (although some traders have done well this year thanks to customers spending their stimulus money) is the boost that the end-of-year sales should give to a retail sector going through systemic change, with online buying eating increasingly heavily into bricks-and-mortar shopping.
The second is the fear that a crush of shoppers - especially in Greater Sydney - could trigger the explosion of coronavirus cases the Avalon cluster was first feared to presage. Premier Gladys Berejiklian went as far yesterday as urging Sydney residents not to attend today's Boxing Day sales.
A year ago, we could confidently predict that such a warning would be roundly ignored.
But Australia's overall reaction to coronavirus strictures has been as accepting - if not more so - than many other nations.
For the time being, at least, our supposed larrikin spirit has given way to what most of us see as common sense.
And if that has contributed to a lower COVID toll, then that in itself has been a Christmas present to the nation.
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