The privilege of coming home

It was with a very heavy heart that Prime Minister Boris Johnson then said at a press conference on a Saturday four years ago, I have to tell you that we cannot continue Christmas as planned. With the holiday season just days away and much of the country about to start moving, Covid restrictions have had to be tightened again.

But the new restrictions would not come into effect until midnight. This gave everyone nearly eight hours to dodge before technically breaking the rules. And many did, moving forward with travel plans, crowding onto trains that were most likely ravaged by the plague.

Within three hours, tickets on many train lines were sold out and Health Secretary Matt Hancock was call those who choose to travel while the virus resurfaces are completely irresponsible. But they were following the letter, if not the spirit, of the law, and the Prime Minister, who was not a natural Oliver Cromwell figure, probably knew it. If he really wanted to arrest everyone, the restrictions would have been immediate.

After all, coming home for Christmas is, for many, an annual ritual and, as foolish as it may seem, it felt particularly necessary that year. One of the side effects of the overly centralized nature of the British economy is that every year around midwinter, London empties. Mostly, the town attracts people from all over these islands and beyond. But for a week each year, many of them leave, leaving the metropolis to tourists and locals.

The idea of ​​Christmas is so tied up with the idea of ​​a journey home that I have sometimes (but not in 2020) found myself jealous of those who have to make it. It's what Christmas movies are about, like the B-plot in Alone at homeor the many Hallmark movies in which career women discover that everything they ever wanted is actually in a lumberjack-shaped package in their small rural town. It's also the subject of songs, at least one of which is pretty good (although, when you think about where Chris Rea actually came from, it turns out to be a song about the experience of a traffic jam on the A1(M)).

And that's something that, growing up near a metro station, I was largely denied. In my early twenties, while sharing a house in Southwark with friends, I tried to be excited about the trip home for Christmas, but a brief stint on the 42 bus followed by 20 minutes on a train at departure from Liverpool Street was missing something, one way or another. In the years since, I've sometimes not even had that, and a Christmas in which you can be fed elsewhere, even when you wake up and return to your own bed, gets top marks for convenience but scores poorly in terms of romance.

Last year, however, I returned home; I went back to my mother's house, where I spent my teenage years, for a whole week. I was six months into my grief and almost everyone had told me how Christmas would be the hardest thing of all. But they were wrong. After that year and that loss, there was something deeply comforting about returning to the familiarity of the life my mother and stepfather had built together. Drinks in the local and walks the familiar streets. Visits from family friends, I rarely see them and I don't know them particularly well. My father-in-law snored quietly in front of the television, sometimes waking with a start to ask, “Who is that?” “. I now understood that no matter what happened, no matter how old I was, I was still lucky to have a home there to return to.

Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas from just 49

I'm starting again this year. And even though I'm even older, I can't wait. When you find yourself crammed onto another crowded northbound train, or your uncle starts talking about Nigel Farage again, maybe remember that not everyone has a family to return to every year. Those of us who do it should never take it for granted.

[See also: Richard Curtiss Christmas carol]