With Christmas markets cancelled and strict curfews and contact restrictions in place, it’s clear that Christmas in Germany will look a little different this year. However, a new survey has found that not everyone is planning on sticking to these rules over the holidays - just as politicians are calling for the restrictions to be tightened. 

Majority of Germans support Christmas rules, but still might break them

A substantial proportion of people in Germany intend to flout coronavirus restrictions over the festive period, despite being broadly in favour of them. This is the finding of a study commissioned by the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich. 

Accordingly, more than three quarters of the survey’s respondents said that they were in favour of the measures introduced by the German government to contain COVID-19. However, 42 percent also said that they might want to disregard the rules if they interfered with their Christmas plans. The overlap between these two groups is 25 percent. 

The study found that people’s willingness to break the rules is particularly strong when they consider the rules to be overbearing or superfluous. “A disproportionate number of people wrongly believe that they can assess a situation like this better than other people - which is why they approve of prohibitions for other people, but disregard them themselves,” explained Philipp Rauschnabel, professor of digital marketing and media. 

People plan to make the best of “Corona Christmas”

At the same time, the survey found that the majority of people in Germany are still optimistic about the festive period, with more than two thirds agreeing with the statement, “We’ll make the best of it!”

Some even drew some positive conclusions from the prospect of a “Corona Christmas”: 28 percent believe that the coronavirus crisis can be used as an excuse to get out of undesirable social commitments; a quarter believe there will be fewer arguments this year; and 45 percent said they are experiencing less pre-Christmas stress. 

German politicians discuss retail shutdown

The Robert Koch Institute reported 14.054 new coronavirus infections in the 24 hours to Tuesday morning, a slight increase on last week, when 13.064 new infections were reported on Tuesday. 423 new deaths were confirmed, bringing the total death toll to 19.342. 

In view of the persistently high infection numbers, a number of German politicians are calling for tighter measures to be enacted - perhaps even before the start of the school holidays. Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn said that if the infection rate does not decrease significantly in the coming days, stricter contact restrictions would become unavoidable. 

The minister did not rule out the possibility of a renewed shutdown of shops across the country. “We have to make it dependent on the next few days, and whether we can bring the numbers down,” said Spahn. Bild reported that ministers were considering a post-Christmas retail lockdown, which would see only supermarkets allowed to remain open, between December 27 and January 3 or 10. In Saxony, there are discussions about closing shops from next Monday. 

Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly emphasised in a video meeting on Monday that the measures taken so far were not enough to significantly reduce the number of infections, which have stagnated at a much too high level. She said that the country would not be able to get through the winter without additional measures, and called for the next round of talks with the federal states to be brought forward to before Christmas.