BACK in the day, in the first flush of married life, I determined to do Christmas “properly”.

Not a small ambition in a top floor Glasgow flat with a kitchen designed to resemble a fairly capacious broom cupboard.

Thus were the invitations dispatched to the widowed mother, the mother-in-law, the husband’s aunt and uncle, the husband’s solo uncle, my solo aunt, the widowed sister-in-law, her mother and her stepfather.

What these revellers had in common was, frankly, not very much, bar the fact that one of their – often not very close – relations had chosen to marry each other.

The resultant “party” was not without strain, least of all the year the mother and the mother in law fetched up in identical frocks (apparently all my fault).

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And almost every year when the sister-in-law’s stepfather had sufficient liquid encouragement to do his party dance. (Don’t ask.) This went down particularly well with my virtually teetotal mother. (Yes, I did miss out on that gene.)

The husband’s uncle, the one with an aunt attached, would respond by singing a selection of his all time faves.

He had once been in a works’ choir, mind, so could, as they say, hold a tune, though the Welsh miners’ ensemble need not have lost any sleep.

At the end of a very long day, and many long days in the shopping and planning, we retreated to the broom cupboard, and a small and uninviting mountain of dirty dishes and festive detritus.

In the fullness of time, as these assorted relatives went to the great grotto in the sky, the husband and I would celebrate with the remainder of the posse – latterly down to his aunt and his mother.

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Trust me on this: four adults, two of whom are very, very old, sitting round a table in paper hats is not the essence of untrammelled merriment.

But we persisted, as does everyone, because a mixture of tradition, obligation, and the usual relentless pre-Christmas commercial onslaught, had led us to assume that was how it had to be.

We are, all of us, hardwired to believe that unless we spend a couple of days in the bosom of family and friends we will somehow have failed to observe some sacred custom.

Yet let us examine this coming Christmas, the one falling in the midst of a particularly stubborn pandemic. And ask ourselves how absolutely vital it is to take a punt on our family and friends not being put at risk in order that we can still celebrate “properly”.

It seems that for every day we let our guard down, we will pay for with some four or five of the seriously locked down variety.

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Yet that, for me, is not the principal consideration. With varying degrees of sense and commitment we have spent the bulk of 2020 behaving in a totally abnormal fashion.

We haven’t enjoyed having friends round our table for a convivial meal. We’ve rarely been able to eat out to mark birthdays or anniversaries.

Our friends in the Hindu and Sikh communities have been expected to observe strict Covid compliant rules through their own major festivals. Nothing about this benighted year has been as normal.

People have faced redundancy, and businesses have closed or borrowed to the hilt to keep their show on the road as we all waited for science to deliver us from this persistent evil.

And here we are in the home straight. Not one, but three successful vaccine trials, and many more in the pipeline from other countries pursuing the same holy grail.

People have risked their own health and happiness to volunteer for trials. Scientists have put their lives on hold week after week to try and resolve in 10 months what normally takes as many years.

In the light of all we have been through is it really so essential that we risk all that sacrifice? Really?

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