From online Santas to Zoom family dinners: how the world is adapting to its first Covid-19 Christmas
- This Christmas, things are going to be different, with all the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions
- Thankfully, people around the world are adapting to a socially distant version of the holiday
Most people have accepted Christmas will be different in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. But around the world, some are finding a way to generate festive cheer.
In Hong Kong, shopping malls have pulled out the stops with elaborate Christmas installations and lights even as the city battles a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections.
In China, holiday events in major cities will go ahead as usual. Expect to see a Christmas-themed mass pillow fight on Christmas Eve in Shanghai, and a concert of holiday classics the same day, billed as an “evening of peace”.
Stephane de Montgros, of the Riviera Events agency, says: “We have been extremely fortunate in China with the pandemic largely contained and life pretty much back to normal.”
However, with China’s international borders still closed, foreigners won’t be returning home to celebrate Christmas with their families and friends, he says. Instead, they will celebrate with their “local families” – their close circle of friends in China. “It will be a combination of hosting dinners at home and going out,” he says.
The holiday season in China will be normal in another way too: authorities in many parts of the country will ban the celebration of Christmas, casting it as a Western tradition, as they continue a campaign to Sinicise religion.