‘We don’t want to cancel Christmas… I think that would be inhuman,” the prime minister said just last Wednesday in response to calls from scientific experts to reduce the relaxation of social restrictions allowing households to mix over Christmas.

Four days later, he was forced to abruptly change course in light of alarming data indicating a steep increase in infection rates in London and parts of the south-east and east of England, thought to be linked to a new and more easily transmitted variant of Covid-19. The government was right to immediately impose tougher tier 4 restrictions on these parts of the country and elsewhere to restrict indoors household mixing to Christmas Day only.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/20/observer-view-boris-johnson-christmas-u-turn