But there was something urgent I had to do. In my disorientated state I couldn't grasp it, until in a rush it hit me.

I had to get a COVID test. It was Christmas Day. I was alone.

I was one of the unlucky Canberrans declared a close contact on Christmas Eve. Like many living here, I am not originally from the capital, and was due on a 7pm flight to Melbourne after work. The afternoon had gone from a laid-back one writing up Christmas stories to chaotic phone calls informing family I hadn't seen since April I wouldn't be home for Christmas.

After all the chaos and tears, and fear this would not only be my first Christmas without family but my first alone, I woke to a morning of calm stillness. It was overcast but already warm when I stepped out of my empty sharehouse.

The early rising birds were the only sound to accompany my footsteps to the car. Driving out to the Garran testing clinic, I was overcome by the beauty of Canberra. How quickly it can go from sturdy bureaucratic buildings to the unpredictable mess of bushland.

I'm one of those who came to the ACT as a student, barely having travelled beyond the inner north, so my drive into Garran surprised me with how leafy and beautiful the area surrounding the testing clinic was.

It was about 6.45am. A decent queue had formed, it was already hot as the sky began to brighten, and the clinic didn't open until 7.30. I shuffled my way to the end of the line, book in hand and music on to escape from the reality that this was my Christmas Day.

A call from family broke the spell. They tearily wished me a Merry Christmas and expressed how much they hated COVID.

I will confess, up until this point of the morning I had felt nothing. I've been labelled a Grinch on a few occasions in my years as a young adult. Get me started on a rant about the market capitalist roots of this day's significance and I will have plenty to say. I have always appreciated the time it gives me with family, but it has never been a day of emotional significance to me.

READ MORE:

After the brief call with my parents I felt a lump in my throat, and for the first time looked up from my book and cast my eyes around those lining up with me. We were the unlucky bunch who had been caught out. We were the ones who had to isolate on Christmas.

Yet the more I looked in my silent contemplation, the more humanity I saw. I watched an extremely muscular and heavily tattooed man insist an elderly woman in a pink cardigan make her way to the front of the line, guiding her through the crowd.

I watched parents with young kids play games that kept their Christmas spirit lifted.

I watched people staring out into space with tears in their eyes.

I watched groups of friends with party shirts laugh and banter with one another.

I watched tantrums, I watched hugs, I watched exhaustion, I watched compassion.

What is Christmas about? For someone who has had 90 of them, and for someone having their first bundled in a parent's arms?

I reached my second hour, and the healthcare workers with their constant grace and dignity flowed like clockwork in managing the needs of young and old.

As I sat waiting for my name to be called inside the testing clinic, I looked around at laminated print-outs of Christmas images and messages.

Someone who was also tasked with being a front-line worker had still found the time to decorate the space with festivities.

Walking back out to my car at 9am, I realised I had given more thought to what this day meant in those two hours and 15 minutes than ever before.

The giving and care and tenderness I was witnessing during this pandemic had given me perspective, and a true sense of it feeling like Christmas.

The remainder of my day was full of reading, FaceTime calls, friends reaching out, and avoiding social media.

It was a time of reflection and grounding on a day where I usually let myself get carried away by the hype, stress and pressure.

As I sat down to write, a friend phoned me.

They told me to go to my doorstep. I was greeted by their socially distanced smiles and a classic Aussie Christmas dinner of prawns, ham, vegetables and pavlova.

All in all, not too shabby a Christmas for 2021.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: