I’ve been in the newspaper business for 20 years now. This will be the first Christmas in my career that I haven’t had to produce a Christmas paper or a New Year’s paper. It’s going to feel … odd.
Odd, but a bit more relaxed, at least. That’s because, due to statutory holidays and such, printing schedules are condensed around Dec. 25, which used to mean we would be producing a week or two worth of newspapers in just a few days.
It made for a great deal of stress, long hours and a good degree of cursing and swearing as we struggled to meet our deadlines.
With the closure of Northern Life last March, there will be no Christmas newspapers this year and while I won’t miss the added stress, I will miss what had become a tradition in my life over the past two decades.
Christmas 2020 will be doubly strange, too, given that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and Ontario is going to enter into another provincewide lockdown come Dec. 26.
I hope you, dear Sudbury.com+ members, will be taking appropriate measures to keep you and your loved ones safe.
Will I miss seeing my parents this Christmas? Indubitably. Will I miss visiting with my wife’s Aunt Vi and cousins? Of course.
Naturally, my wife and our two children want to spend the time with our loved ones, but we also want to protect them — particularly my parents and Auntie Vi, who are all over the age of 60 — from COVID-19. So we’ll be wishing Merry Christmas and Happy New Year by Zoom or by phone. We’ll be dropping off gifts outside and sending greetings from a distance.
It’s not ideal, no, but far better than the alternative: hospitals potentially overrun with sick people such that the capacity to treat anything other than COVID-19 becomes difficult.
We don’t want to start 2021 with a wave of sickness and death, but looking at the numbers released today, that may be unavoidable. The data suggests we could see 3,000 to 5,000 new cases a day by mid-January without taking this serious step of locking everything down.
Like you, I hope this step helps stem the rising tide of cases. Let’s all do our part to make that happen. Let’s flatten the curve once again.
Rather than resenting the virus or questioning the lockdown decision, I’m choosing to take this lockdown as an opportunity, an opportunity to enjoy some peace and quiet, an opportunity to take a step back and breathe, an opportunity to spend time with my wife and children.
We can’t make the virus disappear, but we can control how we personally respond to it. Don’t let frustration and pandemic fatigue ruin your Christmas. Make the best of a bad situation and enjoy the time you have.
