HAVE you written Christmas off yet? Or are you still expecting that it will be the time when every Santa has a ball with family coming round and friends coming over?

It looks likely that the North-East is going to move out of lockdown on December 2 into one of the toughest tiers of restrictions, so would easing those restrictions over Christmas be a welcome holiday?

Or would it just give the green light to millions of people to criss-cross the country, potentially spreading the virus and undoing all the miserable graft we’ve all put in during 2020.

Some Government advisors reckon for every day of freedom over Christmas there will have to be five of severe restrictions in January.

The Government also has to legislate for a minority who will just do what they please. We don’t want to criminalise Christmas so that the police are inundated with reports of people partying.

But the Government should be cautious. It should not allow five days of freedom if that means another month or more of miserableness before the vaccine kicks in. 2020 will go down as blooming awful and so let’s end it in the same style, with a subdued season of good will so that we can really look forward to glad tidings in 2021.