Having wrapped the presents for the family this Christmas, the realisation has dawned that this is as much of a Christmas as there will be this year. Those presents that normally serve as an ‘entry’ point into the festivities, now serve as the sole engagement with the time that you can usually circle on the calendar as to when everyone puts their personal lives to one side and gets together.

Not this year.

Those presents now serve solely as a reminder that there won’t be the usual drinks before midday, overindulging during dinner, finding a separate stomach for cheese and then fighting off the urge to nap during the evening’s television. They’ll still be exchanged, shared via sterile drop-offs outside of doors and only then remind us of those who aren’t around us whilst we open them.

Boris talks of foregoing this Christmas in order to see future ones; but what if some family members aren’t destined for future Christmases? What if they’re elderly, have been in-and-out of hospital recently and used the big day as motivation to keep them going? That one day that they can see the people that they haven’t properly seen for the last 9 months.

Christmas couldn’t now have come at a worse time for so many. What is normally a high-point of the year, may now only serve as the newest low in a never-ending collection of low ones.

That’s the reality. Whilst most of can, begrudgingly, wait it out, for lots of others this isn’t something within their control.