Leave people free to make their choice

Is it with all the family gathered around the table, eating turkey, pulling crackers and telling lame jokes before huddling in front of the TV to hear the Queen’s Christmas message, glass of sherry in hand?

It’s a nice image, quaint even. But it is not everybody’s vision of Christmas. Society, and especially government, should recognise that rather than try to force people to conform to a stereotype.

For many people their friends are as important as their family. They want to raise a glass and have a celebration.

For others, they prefer to have a Christmas meal served in a restaurant and avoid all the cooking and washing up. They do not want to be told halfway through their main course that the law insists that they now go home.

Others have no family on island, or at least not one they want to spend a day bickering with. A quiet drink or meal out is preferable.

The licensing laws on Christmas Day and Easter are an outdated anomaly and Home Affairs is right to relax its grip.

However, as with Sunday drinking and Sunday trading, this is not an instruction nor an obligation, just an invitation.

Pubs, hotels and restaurants that do not want to open should stay closed. Staff who do not want to work should look to take the day off, as they do now.

Those who do have to work behind the bar or serving food will join thousands of others in all manner of jobs who reluctantly end up working holiday shifts.

And people who want to stay at home and eat a Christmas meal with their family or go to church at Easter should do exactly that.

The law cannot force people to enjoy Christmas and Easter in a prescribed manner. Far better to let people choose their own course. Deputies need to recognise that the island is not as religious as it once was and certainly not as monotheistic.

The world has not come crashing down because of Sunday trading or opening. Nor will it do so if the opening hours of a few pubs, hotels and restaurants are relaxed.