The last time I spent Christmas by myself it was 1999 and I lived in San Francisco. I can’t remember why I made the decision to skip Christmas with my family that year. I do remember that I had New Year’s Eve plans with friends the following week so it didn’t seem like a big deal.

Oh but it ended up being just that – a big deal. I tried, all day long, to ignore that it was Christmas. This was an abject failure. One corner market and the coffeehouse that served bad coffee were both open but otherwise the streets were leaden, closed, cold, and bright. There was virtually nobody around. The entire day felt like a long, extended groan. Most of all, I felt alone. The grey walls of my decrepit apartment didn’t nestle me; they confined me. I made a little pact with myself to never spend Christmas alone again.

In my adolescence and throughout my twenties I had come to really dislike Christmas – the totality of it, the commercial crush, the absence of a meaning beyond present exchange, and of course there was my project of embracing marginal left-wing political positions that increased my alienation from the world. I think it was this solo Christmas that made me realise the holiday could also be a time to regroup and recharge with family. I missed what I didn’t have, was able to yearn for it, appreciate it, calibrate it differently. Still, I wasn’t crazy about Christmas. When I was 31 I fell in love with someone who felt profoundly culturally alienated by the holiday, and I integrated that distance into my own emotional Christmas calculus.

But again, it’s withdrawal that prompts reconsideration: In 2008 it was difficult to make Christmas happen. There were snowstorms on the east and west coasts that December. My partner’s stepfather had died the previous month, and I was with him and his family in Buffalo for a memorial service for a week. Snow drifted down, day in and day out. Flights were cancelled left and right – as was mine. Orbitz told me to speak to the airline; the airline rejected this interpretation; this lead me back to a desperate 45 minutes on the phone with Orbitz. “I’m just trying to see my mother for Christmas. Have you ever been away from your family for the holidays?” I asked the woman in the call centre in the Philippines and immediately regretted my insensitivity, recognising quickly that there was a very good chance that her answer to that question would have been yes.

I somehow got a flight from Buffalo to O’Hare, stood in an interminable line there, and was told that the nearest United could get me to Seattle was Los Angeles. What about Vancouver, I asked? Not possible, the agent told me – I’d need a passport. I have my passport with me, I responded. (It would never occur to me to travel anywhere without my passport.) The agent mouthed an O. I got one of the last seats on the plane, booked a cheap airport motel, bought a bus ticket for Seattle the next morning, and by noon was reunited with my mother.

Incidentally that was the last time I bought anything from Orbitz or another US travel fare aggregator – that marked the end of chasing cheap fares that absolved all the concerned parties from basic responsibility to their customers.

But the real lesson of that experience is that I was able to get by on my own determination and knowledge. For the agent at O’Hare, the flight to Vancouver didn’t even come up as an option. I knew I could make my way from Vancouver to Seattle with a minimum of fuss. Of course I had my passport with me. I knew I could find a cheap hotel and figure out a bus link.

Which brings me, circuitously, to this year, the year when determination and knowledge are not enough. I had a plan to fly to Portland in late November, isolate for ten days with COVID-19 tests, and then join my mother and sister and her family’s bubble. I’d stay until the end of December. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it.

After long and serious consideration, I spent six weeks in the US last summer. It had been difficult – the isolation in stages, the multiple COVID-19 tests, refraining from hugging anyone for two weeks – but I did it as responsibly as I reasonably could do. And in Portland there was warm weather and sunny skies. I could take lots of long walks in t-shirts, pick up breakfast to go at Fried Egg I’m in Love or sit outside at a picnic table at Kachka eating my fill of pickled vegetables. But now COVID-19 was spiking yet again and I’d have nowhere to go when it rained incessantly. How responsible would it be to fly across the Atlantic with COVID-19 surging? My summer journey had been easy – one fight, direct, fast; this itinerary was complicated, involving multiple airports. I decided, painfully, to reschedule it.

So no Christmas with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. That was indeed sad. But I would have my Christmas-diffident love with me. We’d go on a long walk, maybe order Chinese delivery for dinner, watch some bad television.

You probably know where this is heading. Since September Matt and I have been camped out in Lisbon. A few weeks ago he returned to London for work. His plan had been to fly back to Lisbon earlier this week and stay until mid-January, when we’d return to London until at least one of us (hopefully both of us) got vaccinated. But then the new COVID-19 variation emerged, and very quickly flights from the UK to the rest of Europe were cancelled. He can’t get here. So there are no Tejo-side walks together, no live gift exchange, no subpar Chinese dinner. In their place there would be Zoom and FaceTime chats.

Weirdly, it's been surprisingly ok. It’s bright and windy outside. Obviously, this was not how I wanted to spend the day. But there is no alternative. This is temporary. The sun came up this morning and will set in a few hours, as it apparently has a habit of doing. This is life right now.

For many people – shall we say, for people able to plan and execute a long-distance Christmas that requires travel – this is the first year when determination and ingenuity can’t, by themselves, to the trick. The virus simply is. We can ignore it at considerable risk to ourselves and those we care about or we can take it seriously. Not all travel is wrong, but all travel is complicated and requires careful consideration of all sorts of things we previously wouldn’t have given a moment’s consideration. We have hit some unbudgeable limits.

Happy limited holidays. I mean it!