Is it acceptable to ban anti-vaxxers from your family Christmas plans?

ChrISTMAS may be the season of peace and goodwill, but there are limits. When it comes to anti-vaxxers, I would have no qualms about excluding them from the celebrations.

In my household, the big feast takes place on Christmas Eve. I spend three days getting everything ready and feed up to 20 people, from toddlers to 80-somethings. Close and extended family and any friends who would otherwise be solo are invited. In other words, I’m a pretty generous hostess, even willing to host vegetarians and vegans who shun my lovely moist turkey. But there’s no place for anti-vaxxers.

The ‘rest of us’ includes several people in their 60s and 70s. I’m clinically very vulnerable, as is my 80year-old pal who has kidney disease. I’d be mortified if one of my guests gave her Covid because he or she had selfishly failed to get jabbed.

It’s not that I’m averse to all risk. despite the ominous-sounding omicron, I’m determined to make this a magical Christmas after last year’s paltry affair.

The small kids aren’t vaxxed, and there’s always a chance that someone will be harbouring the virus as a result of socialising in the runup to the holidays, but I’m not going to ban my partner’s little grandson or my great-niece and great-nephew from the house. I just don’t want anyone who doesn’t take Covid seriously sitting at my table and souring the celebrations.

For one couple I know, this has turned into a Christmas nightmare.

They have two adult children and four grandchildren. Their daughter is a nurse who has worked on Covid wards and seen, on a daily basis, the devastation that Covid can bring. The son is an anti-vaxxer who loves to spout conspiracy theories and his wife has demonstrated against vaccinations outside her own children’s school.

‘They’re not bad people,’ my friend told me, ‘and I love my son, despite his incomprehensible views. But my daughter refuses to speak to him, so it was either cancel Christmas or make a choice.

‘I’ve had to tell him he can’t come on Christmas day, and we’ll meet him and the kids in the park on Boxing day and hand over the presents then. It makes me really sad.’

In my eyes, anti-vaxxers are not just selfish but irresponsible and stupid. In a free country, they are entitled to think what they like — just don’t expect me to pull a cracker in their company.

I’d never pull crackers with this selfish lot