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What is a family celebration?
It depends on how you view the term "family"
Photo: ArtMarie / Getty Images
Christmas is canceled, so not really, but for some it is.
The tougher shutdown begins on December 16, and the federal and state governments have agreed on this.
Shops closed, schools and daycare centers as close as possible or without mandatory presence.
And Christmas?
On the side of the federal government it says: "Depending on their respective infection occurrences, the federal states can allow meetings with 4 people from the closest family circle and children up to the age of 14 years from December 24th to December 26th, 2020." For everyone else, the five-person-out-of-two-household rule still applies.
An old family model
The closest circle is defined as the family has been defined since the 1950s, as a Christian-bourgeois model of people who ideally live as a couple in the same apartment with children
(In addition, a few more close relatives are allowed to join as an exception).
What does this mean for everyone who is not in partnerships?
Or for people who have no contact with their immediate relatives?
What does it mean for two couples who are very close friends but who live in more than two households?
It's not about
,
to complain about the actions or evaluate as false, it's about the discrepancy: politicians are apparently still not arrived now, they seem to believe in an ideal that still handed down, heteronormative Family model, while the reality has long since changed.
The Christmas rule shows (once again) which priorities are fundamentally set in Germany, both in terms of family and religion.
Did or do the same relaxations apply to people celebrating the Sugar Festival or Hanukkah?
No.
Since the beginning there has been the concept of the
chosen family
in queer contexts,
i.e.
of people who choose people themselves with whom they want to spend their lives: Sometimes this happens out of necessity, because their own parents do not accept that your own children are, for example, homosexual or trans *
;
sometimes just because it makes a difference to be among people who feel the same or similar.
In purely practical terms, they shouldn't celebrate Christmas together this year because they live in more than two households and are apparently not seen as a family - even if they see themselves as exactly that.
The same applies to the 17.6 million singles who might want to spend the holidays with their best friends - for example because they have no relatives of their own, or because friends are often the more pleasant family, or simply because their relatives do not live in the same country.
De facto, the Christmas arrangement would also exclude them if they came from more than two households.
Only not in Berlin.
The Berlin Senator for Culture Klaus Lederer writes on Twitter that “queer & single reality is taken into account” and immediately adds what he means by that: “That means that in Berlin from 24.-26.
can meet up to 5 people from 5 households (but do not have to!) who are not close relatives in the civil law sense. "
What are the Christmas easing based on?
In the federal state of Berlin, five people from five households are allowed to meet, while in other federal states the five-person-two-household rule still applies to elective relatives - as before.
Of course, theoretically, two singles from two households could still meet for Christmas.
Why exactly the regulation at Christmas for the "closer family circle" is relaxed and not for everyone else, however, lacks any logic.
It is not the case that a "direct blood relationship" would protect us from being infected with Sars-CoV-2.
And because there is no virological evidence for this procedure, it simply insinuates the following: The "classic family" is more valid than any other.
Even in normal times, the holidays put pressure on people who are not considered to be a nuclear family or who do not have one.
On these days everything stands still, everything is reduced to family life, and it is then made very clear to them that they are not considered the norm.
The shops are closed, most of the friends are at home, so loneliness can creep in, probably easier than usual this year due to the pandemic.
So Christmas is saved, but only for the nuclear family, for everyone else this relaxation at the holidays can only be understood as a slap in the face, as a sign that their model, their
chosen family
, has no value.
Icon: The mirror