Every December, the botanical gardens in my neighborhood have a spectacular event called “Garden of Lights.”
Brookside Gardens, which closes at sundown 11 months out of the year, becomes a land of enchantment during Garden of Lights. Parents and children bundle up, walk around, and gawk at the awesome lights.
Recommended Stories
But not this year.
With much regret, we are canceling Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens, Montgomery Parks this year. The decision came after considerations about the health and safety of visitors, staff, and volunteers.
Learn more: https://t.co/zNkvrxHMJB. pic.twitter.com/I4AIqBUdB5
— Montgomery Parks (@MontgomeryParks) September 24, 2020
My county — which has already closed all public schools through February, prohibited outdoor church services in the spring, and tried to close all nonpublic schools, despite a coronavirus positivity rate down around 2.5% — has decided to cancel this outdoor event out of health concerns.
There are indoor elements to this event, including a greenhouse and a large indoor train set, that could easily be canceled or have special tickets and very limited admission, but the outdoor stuff is always naturally distanced. People aren’t sitting at picnic tables or crowding in tightly. They’re ambling about, and they could do so totally masked. I’ve been to this event every year for more than a decade and have never seen people touching anyone not from their family.
Why close it down? Sometimes, it seems like governments close down fun stuff because they think fun is inappropriate during the coronavirus. I’m not exaggerating. Consider closed playgrounds. California and many municipalities are closing playgrounds, despite a lack of scientific grounding for such a move. As Matt Welch writes at Reason magazine, “Children are being punished for California bureaucrats’ failure to keep up with the science.”
What is behind this fanatical closure of non-dangerous activities and places? It’s not just bureaucrats’ thirst for power because some regular people seem to share this passion.
Get on Nextdoor or a neighborhood Listserv or Facebook group, and you’re bound to see adults complaining that children are doing something fun. One woman in our neighborhood complained about kids going for walks in the woods. One man said he “hates” everyone who walks through the local parks without masks.
There seems to be a widespread desire for suffering and opposition to joy.
See how people reacted on Twitter when I objected to the government was banning safe activities.
Compare tweets like this to the way Americans handled past crises, such as fighting wars or overcoming the devastation of 9/11. What a bunch of entitled babies many of us have become.
— BJD (@bjdoor) April 17, 2020
For Christ’s sake don’t go fishing for six weeks. You’re not storming Normandy beach
— Patrick Lewis (@plewis1956) April 18, 2020
Back in the spring, I tried to be empathetic to this reaction. During a time of hardship, people were looking for a shared sacrifice that could ennoble our suffering.
But now, it simply seems like cruelty born out of pain. You’re having a bad year, and so you want other people to suffer, too.
That was certainly on display in early August, when parents in my county fought to allow the private schools to open. A very common response on Twitter, Facebook, and in the County Council was, “If public schools are closing, how can you justify opening private schools?”
In short, if many children are suffering, how can you justify alleviating the suffering of some kids. It’s a cruel sense of equality, and it’s spreading like a virus, it seems.
