2020’s different Christmas

This year began with hopeful economic signs. Tourism numbers were growing as were jobs.

COVID-19 reached our shores in March.

No precedent served to prepare us for the science fiction horror show that then became our reality.

Ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, The Bahamas has weathered two waves of the disease with some 7,765 infections and 164 deaths as of yesterday.

The economy has suffered unprecedented damage. Unemployment and under-employment have reached over 40 percent, according to some estimates.

Numerous small businesses have failed. Others are limping along.

Public debt has risen to concerning levels.

As unemployment and under-employment numbers grow, savings dwindle and increased numbers of people fear an inability to meet ordinary financial obligations: mortgages, loan payments, rents, insurance premiums, utility bills, and children’s tuition fees.

Reports say that some, accustomed to giving, are instead now forced to source food for themselves and their families from charitable organizations and government assistance programs.

Nervously, we are preparing to celebrate Christmas even as a COVID-tired nation is anxious to shrug off precautions that have defined our lives for longer than we care to remember.

We do not like mask wearing. Nor do we like being required to have our temperature taken and our hands sanitized before entering every building. Sadly, these practices will be with us for a long time yet.

This is a time of year traditionally filled with carolling, church services, gift buying, and large family gatherings — all marked by good cheer, delicious foods and happy revelries.

Instead, we are told to socially distance from all outside of our homes. Adult children visit parents from awkward distances, grandparents wave at grandchildren they want to hug, and friends are kept at bay.

Schools have been closed for nearly a year. We closed schools early, ahead of most other countries. It now appears that we may be amongst the last to reopen them fully.

A gradual slowing of new infections has permitted increased shopping hours and some relaxed restrictions of church services.

Travel restrictions among our islands and internationally are being relaxed.

Atlantis, Baha Mar and other hotels are beginning to reopen. Tourists, in small numbers, are beginning to return to our shores.

The national Christmas tree has been lit in Rawson Square, Christmas decorations installed at traffic roundabouts and, bravely, shops of every variety have decorated for Christmas.

Still our fears of a resurgence of the virus loom large.

For the first time in recent memory, Bay Street is not lined with bleachers nor cordoned off with temporary wire fences to accommodate annual Boxing Day and New Year’s Junkanoo parades.

Junkanoo has been canceled.

This has been an especially difficult year; COVID-19, like a tyranny has tried our souls.

Still, we persevere.

As Thomas Paine so poignantly wrote some 240 years ago referring to valiant combatants in the American War of Independence; we are grateful to the many soldiers who have stood by us during these trying times: the doctors, the nurses, healthcare workers, the solid waste and environmental health workers, the first responders, policemen and women, public officers, teachers and child minders and the essential workers in food stores, pharmacies and banks.

They all deserve and rightly have our gratitude, our love and our thanks.

Paine wrote that “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph”.

We wait impatiently for the arrival of the promising anti-COVID-19 vaccines that will free us from this tyranny and we hold out hope for a better Christmas next year.

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