I was not born in 1941 but I believe that only Christmas 1941 is comparable to Christmas 2020 for the bleakness it offers.

Then, as now, the future offered no optimistic vision for the future, people were dying before their time and one could not anticipate when that terrible time would be over.

Now, of course, we know what came later, how the war ended with a victory for ‘our side’ and how that bleak period brought about 80 years of peace and prosperity. Even then, one must point out, people living in 1941 should have been able to look back and learn the lessons of history and how mankind always comes back from periods of stress and danger and anxiety to better times.

One must not be led astray by the lights in the streets, by the crowds of people shopping or by the official declarations we will be out of Covid by May. Donald Trump had forecast the US would be out of the pandemic by Easter last year and that the churches would reopen. The churches did reopen but the virus did not go away.

People, not just here but everywhere, are preparing for Christmas and the traditional feast celebrations while the governments have been warning we are not out of the woods yet and keep issuing rules and regulations which everyone knows will be disregarded by one and all.

Hence the reliance on the coming vaccination of the populations, produced in record time by the scientific community. But the vaccine has yet to be injected into people and we still not know if there are some incidental side effects. Whatever, the roll-out of the vaccination programme will take time and meanwhile we will still have to co-exist with the virus.

It is for this reason that Christmas 2020 is already ranked alongside the most bleak Christmases in recent memory.

All through this year we have watched as the pandemic tsunami made its way across the world and killed millions. Those who have characterised the pandemic as the virus that kills old people have not yet understood how dangerous it is for all.

It does kill people but it also causes havoc in those who get it but do not die of it, sometimes for many years to come.

And that’s only as regards the medical side. For the pandemic has had a terrible impact on world trade and the economies of people, including ours.

We, like other peoples, have been rather cushioned from its consequences because governments, including ours, have been pouring money to keep people and companies afloat but the time is coming when the governments run out of money. Already, companies especially retail chains, already insecure before the pandemic, have been forced to close down and sack people.

As stated elsewhere, the impact of the pandemic has been terrible in people-oriented sectors such as tourism and accommodation. And Malta has more than its share of these sectors.

It is for this reason that people will celebrate the traditional rites of the feast with trepidation in their hearts. They, we, have no idea if we will still be around in Christmas 2021 nor how will our economic situation, hence our families, be.

This is why we have all become anxious, bad-tempered, have troubled sleep and, in the case of weaker spirits, are tempted to give up on life. It usually happens around Christmas but this year will be worse, the more that some see others celebrating, the worse they feel.

And we must not forget to factor in the lost generations of young people, school-leavers without a job, recent graduates, an entire generation of children whose school year has been disrupted and migrants forced to move away and begin their search again.

And yet the experience of history still tells us that there will somehow be an end to this trauma even as we still remember and miss the many who have died this year, not necessarily because of Covid.

We know from experience there will be Spring again and that we must all be prepared to put our shoulders to help the wheels of commerce turn again.

Maybe it will not be an exact replica of the world we have left before the pandemic’s onset, maybe we will have to learn new tricks as many have had to adapt, they and their employers, to working from home.

Maybe some companies, some jobs, will be lost forever and will have to be replaced.

Meanwhile it is incumbent on all of us to help others to the best of our abilities – this is the real message of the feast. And certainly it is essential we do not create peril for others and for ourselves by observing social distancing and by obeying as strictly as we can the other rules dictated by prudence and by the health authorities.

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