What’s the story with the grandad and Conor in the SuperValu Christmas advertisement? Why is grandad casually arriving into another family’s house? Why are they allowed that massive hug? Young Conor’s feverish excitement suggests they are not in a bubble. Have they been quarantining separately for a couple of weeks?

As a nation, we’re delighted for them anyway. Is that a sign of renewed determination to tough out Level 5? Or an indication that like grandad, we said to hell with the virus and Leo the anti-elf, and said we’re going to damn well travel anyway?

On Monday, when the threat to pub takeaways looked real, a 40-something friend brooded about the fact that she could buy a takeaway pint but was not allowed to stand on the street and drink it. What did they think she was going to do with it – walk home alone with it, just herself and the pint?

Hospital Report

She lives alone and works from home and one or two nights a week she puts on a big padded coat, hat, gloves and mask and meets a friend outside a pub where they buy a few pints from the hatch and stand around chatting at a safe distance.

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If hers was a life framed by alcohol – as many of you are probably thinking – she would be ordering copious deliveries to her warm apartment and having discreet little house parties.

She doesn’t want to do that, nor does she want to rescue a greyhound or pick out paint in Woodies or watch sport on television. But the takeaway pints and chatter, they are signifiers of normality and human connection in a lonely life. They are important.

Long, dark nights

A few months ago when evenings were bright and a walk among humans was possible at 8pm and the righteous rage was focused on schools (remember them?), the word important might have seemed ridiculous in the context of a takeaway pint. But the dimming effect on the human spirit of these long, dark nights is not imaginary.

That’s the odd thing about discerning the individual human face in those big infuriating street scenes. My friend was unaware of the law that takeaway drinks cannot be consumed within 100 metres of the pub that sold them. Does everyone know that?

Now she promises to note which pub tries to whoosh the crowd away from the area and which pub isn’t bothering. She wants to do the right thing, not merely find a loophole in the regulations.

So hers may well be one of the faces in the next video of a brazen public drinking scene. Then again, how many of us have not cheated this time round?

How many of us felt our communal goodwill eroded in recent months by stories of crowded rural pubs and people who brought the virus back from the sneaky trip to Spain while we endured a week in a wet, mostly shuttered resort with a nervy B&B owner?

How many of us have managed to get a bit “confused” about the rules this time around and have sat at one end of a friend’s or parent’s table while various children wandered in and out, or had a coffee in someone’s garden (against the rules) or failed to leave when a third friend showed up?

Winter is long

How many have decided to fire a dash of “common sense” and a glug of “mindfulness” into Level 5 because winter is long and regularly fails to live up to the roaring fire, laughter and harmony vibe of a Christmas TV ad?

The “save Christmas” appeal also makes little sense to my 40-something friend. Her story doesn’t fit into the emotionally charged family narrative threaded through the season. It doesn’t for a lot of people.

But this year, many whose December rituals are built around the annual high excitement of returning offspring will also be facing into a colourless, muted season. Thousands of adult children have taken a responsible decision not to travel home.

The trouble is not with all those who choose to travel anyway; if Christmas means anything it means remembering that we have no idea what is going on in other people’s lives and that “essential travel” will be a double-edged sword for many.

The trouble is with those who will fire ahead because as one young Irish woman related on radio this week, she missed Christmas at home last year because she was elsewhere on holiday and doesn’t want to miss a second one because you know, no one else does Christmas like the Irish.

Another lesson

Maybe this is another lesson from the pandemic. That the narrative of the emigrant’s return and Sally O’Brien belongs to another era. That the explosion of joy around Christmas embedded in the sense of a collective insistence that everyone must be having the time of their lives merely intensifies the pain of those who don’t fit. Or that for some, the pandemic’s injunction to stay away from home will be its greatest gift.

Perhaps it’s time for a reset and some proportion. In 21st-century Ireland, what we love about Christmas – the family gatherings, the returns from abroad, the feasts, the fairylights, the gifts and toys – can and does happen all year round in non-pandemic times.

As it happens, the best Christmas surprise has already arrived in the form of hope brought by vaccines. We can celebrate this one by bringing no harm to others.