’Tis the season to be jolly, and last week Marieke Navin and her boyfriend were planning to attend three Christmas parties between them. But now, following the rise of the Omicron variant, they are not going to any.
“I was looking forward to those parties,” said Navin. “But my priority is protecting Christmas. I don’t want my children to be isolating in their room on Christmas Day, or be unable to visit their dad or my parents. I don’t want my partner’s kids to be unable to come to us on Boxing Day. I don’t want to jeopardise the movement of the children, and I don’t want anyone being poorly over Christmas.”
She is among the many thousands of people around the country who are reluctantly changing their plans to “save” Christmas from Covid.
Last Wednesday, Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, warned that the Omicron variant of the virus was “spreading very fast” and “rapidly progressing”.
Over the past 18 days, since the virus was first reported to the World Health Organization on 24 November, nearly a fifth of the Christmas events booked through the digital events platform HeadBox have been cancelled, with more than half the cancellations occurring in the past week. A further 22% of event organisers have postponed their Christmas parties until the new year, a HeadBox spokesperson said. “There is a desire to protect employees, family and friends in the run-up to Christmas, particularly as so many missed out last year,” she added.
Navin, a festival organiser based in Manchester, said her employer did a poll last week and discovered only 10 of her 35 colleagues wanted to attend the work Christmas party this year. “Personally, I didn’t feel comfortable. I would have had to travel there by train and, even though masks are mandatory on public transport again, I estimate only about 40% of people are wearing them.”
She is relieved that, following the government’s announcement of new “Plan B” restrictions, she will be able to work from home until Christmas Day – and she is now planning to do all her Christmas shopping online. “I’m trying to ringfence Christmas for my family.”
But at the same time, she is unhappy to be spending another December cooped up inside: “It’s another year of not celebrating with friends and family the way you want to. I feel tired that we’re still here – and angry. I think we’ve been let down by the government.”
Hearing about the Christmas party at No 10 last year has been infuriating: “It’s disgusting. It makes a mockery of everything that we’re sacrificing, and have sacrificed.”
Over in the Hertfordshire town of Ware, French teacher Cathie Little is also feeling heartbroken about her Christmas plans. She and her family were looking forward to spending Christmas Day in her homeland of France with her mother, who lives alone. But following the rapid spread of Omicron around the world, she has cancelled their flights and all their plans. “If we came into contact with someone who tested positive on the flight home, we would have had to isolate – and we couldn’t take that chance.”
Being forced to isolate would “ruin” the Christmas holidays for her five-year-old son, she said. “He wouldn’t be able to see his paternal grandparents, which, for him, would be the end of the world. He’s very attached to them, and not being able to see them at Christmas last year was a huge deal for him. It made him very anxious.”
Meanwhile, she hasn’t seen her own mother for two years. “She’s going to be alone on Christmas Day, and that makes me feel so sad. I miss France like crazy, and my friends. But this is what we’ve had to do, to protect my son’s Christmas.”
Instead of celebrating together in France, she and her mother will Skype on Christmas Day and the family will eat a specially made Christmas log from a local French patisserie. “But it won’t be the same.”
In Crouch End, north London, Jessica Bailey has also been cancelling her social plans. She is no longer going to attend her pregnant best friend’s “gender reveal”/Christmas party next Sunday. “That was really tough, because we’re close.”
She has also decided not to invite any of her son’s friends over to celebrate his fourth birthday with him next week. “It’s just such a risky time, 10 days before Christmas. I don’t want to put other parents in that awkward situation of having to say no to their child mingling with mine.”
Her son has been hospitalised twice this month with RSV, a respiratory illness that children appear to be more susceptible to than usual this year: “It’s been really scary,” she says. She is planning to spend Christmas with her 69-year-old mother and a family friend, who is vulnerable to Covid. “For the sake of our Christmas and, more specifically, just for the sake of our own health, I can’t take the risk of me or my son getting Covid right now. I can’t put us through anything else.”
