Opinion

Merry Christmas to all of you who will be celebrating a very different Christmas this year. We all wish things could be different — and by different, we generally mean the same as we always had it.

Cheers: Cheers to Shop Estevan for bringing the highly-entertaining concert with Justin LaBrash and True North to Estevan. A truly great time for those who turned out. Cheers to the beautiful, historic Orpheum Theatre.

The editor: No one is prepared for pregnancy, parenthood, and most especially, no one is prepared for a worldwide pandemic. I want to start off by expressing our excitement at becoming first-time parents.

I feel more confident about the future of Estevan than I did at the start of the year.

Entering the Christmas season, we knew the organizations that assist others in the community were going to face a greater need than ever before. We just didn’t know how great the need would be.

Many business owners I talked to this year said they were thinking about closing offices for the holidays, so many of us are going to get real holiday time off. While the time off will be real, it definitely won't be traditional.

If ever there was a tough Christmas, at least for a lot of us, it will be Christmas 2020. I won’t really miss the work involved in putting up and taking down the tree but that’s only because no one can come to share its beauty with us.

“Well, it looks like it will be him and me around the tree,” the woman said pointing to her husband with a smile. “We’ve done it before, we can do it again,” she explained as we talked about Christmas plans.

As we approach Christmas, Saskatchewan remains caught in the middle of an epicentre of rising COVID-19 cases. To the east of us, Progressive Conservative Premier Brian Pallister announced Manitoba’s lockdown measures will extend past Christmas.

Cheers: Cheers to local merchant Jenny Joans for waiving the cost on a toque that was being purchased by a cancer patient. A very thoughtful gesture. Cheers to all the Estevan Mercury carriers. They deliver us a free community paper every week.