John Griff Column: 'What will your Christmas look like this year?'

Although this week’s government briefing to the public on Monday night had already been widely foretold by the media before it ever took place (the media having been fully briefed in advance if not directly by the PM’s Commons Statement earlier in the day), there was a kind of business-like manner to it with the Boris, Rishi & Chris Variety Show telling us how it’s going to be over at the least the short term from the political, economic and medical standpoints of each man.

As is now customary at the end of the show, questions from the media were preceded by a couple from ‘the public’.

Whether it was stage managed or not I couldn’t say, but I found it interesting that one of the two questions posed concerned what kind of Christmas we might all be able to look forward to.

Christmas?

Yes, the festive season is not so far away. Toy shops with online or mail order capabilities will have been gearing up for it since the summer of last year.

Delivery and logistics firms are bracing themselves for possibly the busiest season on record and there will be a solely seasonal employment market swinging into gear shortly, all timed to deliver over the period between December 24, 2020, and January 1, 2021.

Already we’ve been advised to consider our shopping and stocking needs to avoid disappointment – but is that for the benefit of the stockists and their working capital facilities, or us and our festive fulfilment as we speed out of the year that nobody wants to remember and the promised bright light of a new dawn, post-Brexit Britain?

Inevitably this year the festive season will incorporate looking back – and back on a year the like of which nobody in living memory will have encountered before.

There’s been a lot of talk about mental wellbeing in the past six months – a lot of talk of about resilience too. But how will we categorise the resilience of the nation?

On Monday night Boris Johnson hailed the way in which the nation had responded to the first lockdown of 2020 – I can scarcely believe that I’m about to write the words ‘national’, ‘second’ and ‘lockdown’ here, but it’s conceivable that I might one day have to do so, and not in a speculative way.

Right now we are all trading on our famed resilience again – we’ll have to keep doing so if we are to see Covid-19 out.

Three interviews I’ve recorded for this weekend’s

radio shows put all of this into perspective for me.

Firstly there’s the doctor, Dame Clare Gerada, who says that an increasing proportion of young doctors are burning themselves out caring for the nation and need mental support to ensure their own survival.

There’s the world famous singer songwriter Jamie Cullum, who’s giving away his piano in a competition and who lost an entire world tour to coronavirus but is still delivering a new Christmas album next month.

And finally the environmentalist with almost royal credentials, Ben Fogle.

Ben will be talking about recycling and conservation. In his case, towards the end of the interview, I ask him about the festive season – a time when modern day celebrations generate vast amounts of rubbish from food wrapping, cardboard, plastic and often unrecyclable wrapping paper.

His response is an interesting one because he and his family have adopted a

different way of celebrating the festive season through turning the clock back to perhaps more intimate,

traditional and genuine

values.

All are worth a listen.

Christmas is coming – what will your preparations involve this year?