Have yourself a merry COVID-safe Christmas: 5 tips for staying healthy this festive season

Posted on December 25, 2020 by particularkev

Philip Russo, Monash University and Brett Mitchell, University of Newcastle

We’re now in a very good place in Australia in our fight against COVID-19. When we wrote this, we had very few active cases and no community transmission. Plus, it’s summer, and a vaccine doesn’t appear to be too far away.

After the year we’ve come through, many of us probably want to celebrate big this festive season.

Of course, it’s important to adhere to the limits on the number of people who can gather in your state or territory. But eased restrictions around the country do now allow for larger gatherings with our family and friends.

As we get into the festive spirit, it’s important we also think about how we can conduct this year’s celebrations in a COVID-safe way.

The basics

Before we get to some tips, let’s recap a couple of the key things we know about how COVID-19 can spread.

First, we know close contact is a major risk factor for the spread of COVID-19. This is because droplet spread plays a key role in transmission.

So for example, when an infected person coughs or sneezes, infectious droplets can land on you or in the environment. Then if you touch your face, or nearby contaminated surfaces, you could introduce the virus into your body by touching your mouth or rubbing your eyes.

In a confined space with poor ventilation, there’s also increasing evidence COVID is spread via airborne transmission, which is when droplets smaller in size (aerosols) hang around for longer in the air.

A group of people enjoy a festive evening meal outdoors. — COVID risk is lower when we’re outside.
Shutterstock

5 tips to reduce the risk

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt this year, it’s that it’s not heroic to soldier on if you’re sick. If you are feeling unwell, stay at home. This applies to you and your guests. If you are hosting and you’re unwell, look for another venue, or cancel
Plan for an outdoor gathering — the risk of transmission is significantly lower outdoors. We should make the most of Christmas falling in summer in Australia
If you’re hosting a gathering indoors, dine in your biggest room, or spread everybody out across a few rooms. Open your windows and doors to let in the fresh air and, importantly, increase ventilation
Avoid crowded seating at the table. Set up a few extra trestles or camp tables to space people out
Encourage your guests to perform frequent hand hygiene. Stock up on hand sanitisers and soaps and have them readily available in all rooms and outside, especially if people are helping themselves to food.

And a few other things …

Singing

If you’re feeling particularly merry, you may be tempted to turn up the music and belt out a few carols. But keep in mind singing and shouting can expel more infectious droplets than normal speech.

So if you’re going to perform a hearty rendition of Deck the Halls, perhaps this is something to do outside, not in a crowded room or near food.

Hugs and kissess

No one wants to be a grinch at Christmas, but keeping close contact to a minimum — including in the form of hugs and kisses — will help reduce the risk. Under the mistletoe or otherwise.

Food and drinks

Ideally, reduce the sharing of food, including things like buffets. You could ask guests to bring their own food, but this is not necessarily practical, or as festive. Given the low prevalence of COVID-19 in Australia, it’s probably reasonable to cater for your guests, as long as you’re careful.

When you’re preparing food, whether for your own gathering or to take to someone’s place, remember to keep up regular hand hygiene. And avoid preparing food if you’re feeling unwell.

A woman uses hand sanitiser. — Hand hygiene is particularly important when you’re preparing food.
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With celebratory cocktails, champagne, beer, wine and soft drinks likely to feature on the day, this will mean plenty of glasses lying around. It’s important for people not to share drinks. Using tags on glasses can help people remember which is theirs.

Backyard cricket

Time for a game of backyard cricket after lunch? The wheelie bin is OK to use as stumps, and over the fence is still six and out. But avoid saliva on the cricket ball.

A bit of balance

We’ve endured a year of rules and recommendations to protect ourselves and others. Nothing has been normal this year and our Christmas and New Year celebrations may also need a bit more thought. We might need to come up with some sensible and practical compromises in how we celebrate.

Christmas gatherings do present a significant risk — close, prolonged contact with people, often in confined spaces. Time and time again during 2020 we’ve seen these factors contributing to COVID-19 transmission.

We definitely deserve to have some fun over the festive season, and with COVID so well under control in Australia, we’re in a good place to celebrate. But it’s still important we stay vigilant during this period, so we start 2021 on the right foot.

Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University and Brett Mitchell, Professor of Nursing, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The borrowed customs and traditions of Christmas celebrations

Posted on December 23, 2020 by particularkev

Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Auckland University of Technology

Not long to go now before many of us get to spread some good tidings and joy as we celebrate Christmas.

The main ways we understand and mark the occasion seem to be rather similar across the world. It’s about time with community, family, food-sharing, gift-giving and overall merry festivities.

But while Christmas is ostensibly a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, many of the rituals and customs come from other traditions, both spiritual and secular.

The first Christmas

The journey of Christmas into the celebration we know and recognise today is not a straight line.

The first Christmas celebrations were recorded in Ancient Rome in the fourth century. Christmas was placed in December, around the time of the northern winter solstice.

It is not difficult to spot the similarities between our now long-standing Christmas traditions and the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was also celebrated in December and co-existed with Christian belief for a period of time.

Saturnalia placed an emphasis on the sharing of food and drink, and spending time with loved ones as the colder winter period arrived. There is even evidence that the Romans exchanged little gifts of food to mark the occasion.

A table with food, wine and candles. — Some people still celebrate Saturnalia today with food and drink.
Carole Raddato/Flickr, CC BY-SA

As Christianity took greater hold in the Roman world and the old polytheistic religion was left behind, we can see the cultural imprint of Saturnalia traditions in the ways in which our well-known Christmas celebrations established themselves across the board.

A Yule celebration

Turning an eye to the Germanic-Scandinavian context also provides intriguing connections. In the Norse religion, Yule was a winter festival celebrated during the period we now roughly associate with December.

The beginning of Yule was marked by the arrival of the Wild Hunt, a spiritual occurrence when the Norse god Odin would ride across the sky on his eight-legged white horse.

While the hunt was a frightening sight to behold, it also brought excitement for families, and especially children, as Odin was known to leave little gifts at each household as he rode past.

Like the Roman Saturnalia, Yule was a time of drawing in for the winter months, during which copious amounts of food and drink would be consumed.

The Yule festivities included bringing tree branches inside the home and decorating them with food and trinkets, likely opening the way for the Christmas tree as we know it today.

A decorated Christmas tree in a home. — The decorated Christmas tree can trace its roots back to Northern Europe.
Laura LaRose/Flickr, CC BY

The influence of Yule on the festive season of Northern European countries is still evident in linguistic expression too, with “Jul” being the word for Christmas in Danish and Norwegian. The English language also maintains this connection, by referring to the Christmas period as “Yuletide”.

Here comes Santa

Through the idea of gift-giving, we see the obvious connections between Odin and Santa Claus, even though the latter is somewhat of a popular culture invention, as put forward by the famous poem A Visit from St Nicholas (also known as The Night Before Christmas), attributed to American poet Clement Clarke Moore in 1837 (although debate continues over who actually wrote the poem).

The poem was very well-received and its popularity spread immediately, going well beyond the American context and reaching global fame. The poem gave us much of the staple imagery we associate with Santa today, including the first ever mention of his reindeer.

But even the figure of Santa Claus is evidence of the constant mixture and mingling of traditions, customs and representations.

Santa’s evolution carries echoes of not only Odin, but also historical figures such as Saint Nicholas of Myra — a fourth-century bishop known for his charitable work — and the legendary Dutch figure of Sinterklaas that derived from it.

Sinterklaas has a white beard and is dressed in a red jacket, speaking with some children. — The Dutch figure Sinterklaas looks a lot like Santa.
Hans Splinter/Flickr, CC BY-ND

Christmas down under in the summer

The idea of connecting Christmas to winter festivals and drawing in customs makes the most sense in the colder months of the Northern hemisphere.

In the Southern hemisphere, in countries such as New Zealand and Australia, the traditional Christmas celebrations have evolved into their own specific brand, which is much more suited to the warmer summer months.

Christmas is an imported event in these areas and acts as a constant reminder of the spread of European colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Celebrating Christmas still carries the influence of European contexts, being a time for merriment, gift-giving and community spirit.

Even some of the traditional foods of the season here are still indebted to Euro-British traditions, with turkey and ham taking centre stage.

All the same, as Christmas falls in the summer down under, there are also different ways to celebrate it in New Zealand and other regions that clearly have nothing to do with winter festivals.

Barbecues and beach days are prominent new traditions, as borrowed practices co-exist with novel ways of adapting the event to a different context.

A plate of mini tropical fruit pavlovas with berries — Try a pavlova, something more summery for Christmas in New Zealand.
Marco Verch Professional/Flickr, CC BY

The wintery Christmas puddings are often exchanged for more summery pavlovas, whose fresh fruit toppings and meringue base certainly befit the warmer season to a greater extent.

The transition to outdoor Christmas celebrations in the Southern hemisphere is obviously locked in common sense because of the warmer weather.

Nonetheless, it also shows how both cultural and geographical drivers can influence the evolution of celebrating important festivals. And if you really want to experience a cold Christmas down under, there is always a mid-year Christmas in July to look forward to.

Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Professor of Popular Culture, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How to prepare and protect your gut health over Christmas and the silly season

Posted on December 22, 2020 by particularkev

Claus T. Christophersen, Edith Cowan University

It’s that time of year again, with Christmas parties, end-of-year get-togethers and holiday catch-ups on the horizon for many of us — all COVID-safe, of course. All that party food and takeaway, however, can have consequences for your gut health.

Gut health matters. Your gut is a crucial part your immune system. In fact, 70% of your entire immune system sits around your gut, and an important part of that is what’s known as the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), which houses a host of immune cells in your gut.

Good gut health means looking after your gut microbiome — the bacteria, fungi, viruses and tiny organisms that live inside you and help break down your food — but also the cells and function of your gastrointestinal system.

We know gut health can affect mood, thanks to what’s known as the gut-brain axis. But there’s also a gut-lung axis and a gut-liver axis, meaning what happens in your gut can affect your respiratory system or liver, too.

Here’s what you can do to bolster your gut microbiome in the coming weeks and months.

How do silly season indulgences affect our gut health?

You can change your gut microbiome within a couple of days by changing your diet. And over a longer period of time, such as the Christmas-New Year season, your diet pattern can change significantly, often without you really noticing.

That means we may be changing the organisms that make up our microbiome during this time. Whatever you put in will favour certain bacteria in your microbiome over others.

We know fatty, sugary foods promote bacteria that are not as beneficial for gut health. And if you indulge over days or weeks, you are pushing your microbiome towards an imbalance.

A group of friends clink drinks while wearing Christmas gear. — For many of us, Christmas is a time of indulgence.
Shutterstock

Is there anything I can do to prepare my gut health for the coming onslaught?

Yes! If your gut is healthy to begin with, it will take more to knock it out of whack. Prepare yourself now by making choices that feed the beneficial organisms in your gut microbiome and enhance gut health.

That means:

eating prebiotic foods such as jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onions and a variety of grains and inulin-enhanced yoghurts (inulin is a prebiotic carbohydrate shown to have broad benefits to gut health)
eating resistant starches, which are starches that pass undigested through the small intestine and feed the bacteria in the large intestine. That includes grainy wholemeal bread, legumes such as beans and lentils, firm bananas, starchy vegetables like potatoes and some pasta and rice. The trick to increasing resistant starches in potato, pasta and rice is to cook them but eat them cold. So consider serving a cold potato or pasta salad over Christmas
choosing fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables
steering clear of added sugar where possible. Excessive amounts of added sugar (or fruit sugar from high consumption of fruit) flows quickly to the large intestine, where it gets gobbled up by bacteria. That can cause higher gas production, diarrhoea and potentially upset the balance of the microbiome
remembering that if you increase the amount of fibre in your diet (or via a supplement), you’ll need to drink more water — or you can get constipated.

For inspiration on how to increase resistant starch in your diet for improved gut health, you might consider checking out a cookbook I coauthored (all proceeds fund research and I have no personal interest).

Good gut health is hard won and easily lost.
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What can I do to limit the damage?

If Christmas and New Year means a higher intake of red meat or processed meat for you, remember some studies have shown that diets higher red meat can introduce DNA damage in the colon, which makes you more susceptible to colorectal cancer.

The good news is other research suggests if you include a certain amount of resistant starch in a higher red meat diet, you can reduce or even eliminate that damage. So consider a helping of cold potato salad along with a steak or sausage from the barbie.

Don’t forget to exercise over your Christmas break. Even going for a brisk walk can get things moving and keep your bowel movements regular, which helps improve your gut health.

Have a look at the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating and remember what foods are in the “sometimes” category. Try to keep track of whether you really are only having these foods “sometimes” or if you have slipped into a habit of having them much more frequently.

The best and easiest way to check your gut health is to use the Bristol stool chart. If you’re hitting around a 4, you should be good.

An image of the Bristol stool chart — If you’re hitting around a 4, you should be good.
Shutterstock

Remember, there are no quick fixes. Your gut health is like a garden or an ecosystem. If you want the good plants to grow, you need to tend to them — otherwise, the weeds can take over.

I know you’re probably sick of hearing the basics — eat fruits and vegetables, exercise and don’t make the treats too frequent — but the fact is good gut health is hard won and easily lost. It’s worth putting in the effort.

A preventative mindset helps. If you do the right thing most of the time and indulge just now and then, your gut health will be OK in the end.

Claus T. Christophersen, Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.