Christmas markets, wintertime trips: but, not this year

Caroline Davison was employed by Chemtura, a U.S. manufacturer of additives, before LANXESS acquired the company in 2016. She joined the Specialty Additives business unit in the UK, where she lives in the rural northeast of England. Since then, she has travelled extensively between the UK, the US and LANXESS headquarters in Cologne, Germany, where she first got to know lush Christmas markets. “These delightful traditional markets are what my colleagues from the UK and I used to visit, and we really enjoyed them as a team,” she says.

Her usual private winter trips must also be cancelled this year: “My husband and I got married on New Year´s Eve, and we have developed a family tradition of travelling between Christmas and New Year to celebrate with friends in Spain. That has always been great fun.” In 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, this will be “less than fantastic”, as she soberly notes.

Home office, conference calls and online meetings, all this is nothing new in Caroline Davison’s everyday work. She and her colleagues practiced the virtual work style even before the COVID-19 pandemic. They have now added a special feature to their repertoire: a joint coffee break in front of the screen, “primarily to say, hey, we’re still here, too, and when we can travel again, we’ll see each other in person – maybe next year.”

Based on her own observations, the COVID-19 restrictions hit those professionals particularly hard who depend on personal contact or a specific work environment. These include sales people, and office or laboratory teams. “Everyone does their best to work with the opportunities we have,” she adds.

 

One more day of Christmas? With pleasure!

In Great Britain, Christmas usually comprises both December 25 and 26. The second holiday is referred to as “Boxing Day”. But, for some years now, many people have been starting on December 24 “to enjoy one more day of season, for example by attending evening church carol services, or exchanging an early Christmas present with loved ones” explains Caroline Davison. Over the holidays, the previous limitations on personal contact are to be suspended for 5 days (23-27 Dec) so that people in Great Britain can celebrate with a `social bubble’ of three households.

A complete lockdown will already end on December 2, despite still high infection rates. Depending on the incidence of infection in specific cities and regions, however, significant restrictions will continue to apply. And after the holidays, Caroline Davison suspects, tighter restrictions to be reinstated to prevent a new increase in COVID-19 cases.

COVID-19 is also a mental health crisis

The fact that there is finally some relief on banning social contacts is particularly important from the point of view of older citizens in order to protect the elderly from loneliness and depression. “Meanwhile,” she notes, “the COVID-19 pandemic is as much an issue of psychological as well as physical well-being. I am sure that the mental health of the entire nation is suffering terribly.”.

Digital media do not always offer the necessary sense of community

Caroline Davison has a care support bubble’ with her 91-year-old mother, “fortunately”, as she says. Because even though platforms such as Zoom or Skype enable virtual meetings – they are not necessarily suitable for the very elderly to use. If Caroline Davison can invite a couple of her mother’s friends over the holidays for coffee or tea, yes, that would be a get-together for her like “the good old days.”