“Why, it is he that has got all Covidia under his thumb,” said Mr Tumnus. “It’s
he that makes it always Covid. Always Covid and never Christmas; think of
that!”
– The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (with a few changes)
Were he around today, I
have no doubt that C.S. Lewis, one of the 20thCentury’s greatest
intellects, would be utterly scathing of what the British Government has done
to this country over the past 7 months, given that it has been the very epitome
of the scientific and technocratic oligarchy he warned us about decades
ago. And so I feel somewhat at liberty to take his comment about the White
Witch turning Narnia into perpetual winter without joy and without Christmas,
and apply it to our own situation in the land of Covidia (which is where you
now live) – a place of perpetual fear and misery, where ordinary life is
impossible, and where any hints of joy breaking out must be nipped in the bud
before they are allowed to grow to challenge the new winter normal that
is settling fast around us.
The words may even turn
out to be literally true. In Scotland, they are already talking about what they
call a digital Christmas, whatever absurdity that is, whilst in England a
psychological game of Good Cop/Bad Cop is going on, with Comrade de Pfeffel
Johnson apparently desperately hoping that we’ll all have a normal Christmas,
but with members of the ironically named SAGE committee saying this is wishful
thinking. Who will win out? Of course the Bad Cops will win out, but no doubt
carefully managed and cleverly messaged to present it as a kind of victory for
Good Cop, whereby he wangles some concessions for us, such as a relaxation of
the Rule of 6 to the Rule of 6+1 for a day, so that Great Aunt Maud doesn’t
have to spend the day alone, and with Rishi Sunak perhaps pledging some more of
his magic beans to fund subsidised turkeys. Come to think of it, cut-price
turkeys would be a fairly apt metaphor for those in charge of this debacle. But
lest they try to befuddle us with silly details over the next few weeks, hold
this thought front and centre: The idea that anyone should need permission from
the likes of de Pfeffel Johnson and his crew to be able to celebrate with their
family and relations the coming of the King of Kings into the world is beyond
parody.
Lewis’s point, like so much of what he wrote, was really
rather profound. His original words — “Always winter and never Christmas” —
were his way of showing how tyrants operate. They desire two things:
Firstly, they need to
create perpetual oppression, a “new normal” which is depressing, ongoing, and
which pulls everyone down into the resigned acceptance that there’s nothing
they can do about it.
Secondly, they need to
eradicate all attempts at celebration in the midst of the drudgery, because
celebration reminds people of what life could be like and
indeed what life should be like if it were not for the
tyrants, and so is in danger of breaking the spell.
In the case of Narnia,
that perpetual thing that dragged everyone down was winter. Ordinarily, winter
is wonderful, but constant winter for 100 years without hope of thaw is
oppressive and enough to destroy the morale of the population who gradually
come to accept their conditions as normal. And just in case they should
attempt to restore morale in the midst of the drudgery, reminding themselves
what real life looks like, feels like, tastes like, why it
must be stamped out. This indeed happens when the White Witch comes upon “a
merry party” of animals sitting down to “a lovely smelling feast” with
“decorations of holly,” “the smell of plum pudding,” and “raised glasses”. Joy
cannot be allowed to imperil the misery, and so the scene ends with
her turning them into stone.
In Covidia, the
perpetual thing that drags everyone down is the constant, unrelenting fear,
dished out via “hard-hitting emotional messaging,” using cherry-picked and out
of context statistics, in order to back up the absurdly superstitious notion
that we can control viruses by hiding from them. Like the White Witch, any
semblance of normality and real life breaking through must be crushed, as this
is the greatest threat to the perpetual fear and, if allowed to go unchecked,
may start to convince people that we really don’t need to live like slaves and
that life can operate perfectly normally if we allow it. The imposition of
absurdly high fines for non-compliance, which could ruin a person, are the
Covidian equivalent of the Narnian turning into stone.
One of the saddest
things about all this, is how the unlawful decrees (and yes they have no proper
basis in law) are greeted by those in charge of enforcing them with what seems
to be a kind of relish. Policing Christmas meals might not seem like the sort
of thing you pay your taxes for, or the sort of thing that threatens your life
or livelihood, yet the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, David
Jamieson, whose force has historically not been very quick to break up grooming
gangs, said this about breaking up Christmas
celebrations:
“If we think there’s
large groups of people gathering where they shouldn’t be, then police will have
to intervene. If, again, there’s flagrant breaking of the rules, then the
police would have to enforce.”
Of course, he could have
said something along the following lines:
“West Midlands officers
are paid to protect law-abiding citizens from criminals and criminal activity.
If the Government thinks we’re going to pour our resources into policing
Christmas gatherings, they’ve got another think coming.”
But of course that would
take common sense, courage, and a backbone, all of which seem to have deserted
a good number of our authorities many years ago. What he went on to say must
make it to the shortlist for the 2020 Ironic Statement of the Year
Award:
“We’re sitting on a time
bomb here. We’re getting very near the stage where you could see a considerable
explosion of frustration and energy. Things are very on the edge in a lot of
communities and it wouldn’t take very much to spark off unrest, riots,
damage.”
Well yes, but might
policing people’s Christmas gatherings be one of those things that contributes
to the tipping over the edge? Worth considering, David.
It is plainly obvious
that the people in charge of the Covid debacle have no intention of
relinquishing their grip, or of allowing us to return to proper life, or of
allowing us to take proportionate decisions for ourselves again. It is equally
obvious that they are ably abetted by hordes of willing lower level bureaucrats
who seem to have finally found their calling in life — hassling law-abiding
citizens who are doing perfectly normal things. They are attempting to
police almost every aspect of our lives, and the tragic thing is that we have
largely allowed them to do it without so much as a peep. These joyless,
soulless, technocrats intend to keep Britain under their thumb, making it
always Covid and never Christmas.
In the long run, they
need to know that it shall not always be so. That same King of Kings whose
annual incarnation celebrations they wish to wreck and whose world they wish to
control, did not come to earth 2,000 years ago to have his eternal plan wrecked
by the likes of them. He is very patient, but when he decides enough is enough,
that will be that (see Psalm 2), and these wannabe authoritarians will find
themselves in the same despot’s dustbin of history as their predecessors.
In the meantime, what can we do as these tragic
technocrats keep us in their icy, pseudo-scientific grip? Maybe not much, yet
there is one small thing that we can all do, which if it catches on may have a
chance of breaking the spell that has us in its grip. As Lewis teaches
us, the one thing tyrants fear is masses of people suddenly defying them
by refusing to act according to their joyless, soulless technocracy. And so that
is just what we should do. As much as is possible, defy them by thinking
normally, speaking normally, and living normally. Don’t let their absurd
measures dictate to you how you should think and act. Rather, let your life be
like that merry party, with its lovely smelling feast, its
decorations of holly, its plum pudding, and its raised glasses. And go all out
on that this Christmas.
Make this your new three-phrase slogan
to replace the banal phrases with which this Government has effectively
hypnotised millions of people into giving up their lives and placing us in a
superstitious Doom-Loop:
Act normally. Defy the killjoys. Defeat
tyranny.