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Christina Hopkinson 04 December 2021 5:00am GMT Another day, another diktat, this time health protection chief Dr Jenny Harries telling us not to socialise “when we don’t particularly need

to”. As soon as I heard this, I wondered whether that included the dinner and party I’ve got lined up this weekend – and I concluded that, for me, it felt like very necessary socialising

indeed. In the first lockdown, people spoke of all the high-minded things they missed: trips to the theatre, art exhibitions, caring for their grandparents. Me, I missed getting tipsy and

talking to random strangers at parties. And the apex of unnecessary-but-totally-necessary socialising is the month of December. I love it all: the email drop of invitations as the days get

shorter, the outfit planning, the first drink and the one too many, even the fuzzy head the next day. At Christmas we get to excavate clothes worn only annually, the bad jumper at daytime

drinks with neighbours and the sequinned dress in the evening. I have some ancient glittery eyeshadow that gets a festive outing, and it is a mask to replace the disposable blue ones we’ve

had to wear the rest of the time. When I don sparkles, my personality follows. My brother says he loves “the fug – the thick, heavy atmosphere that hits you when you arrive at a party, the

smell of alcohol and perfume and pheromones and even cigarette smoke”. He knows the fug will be thick with Covid germs this year, as it has been heavy with flu in previous yules, but

triple-jabbed, he’ll be braving his office’s legendary Christmas bash. Covid taught us the value of close family and friends, but it has also shown me the importance of people we meet only

once. It is with strangers that we can make those coincidental connections that reboot our thoughts and feelings. Two Christmases ago, I ended up crying with a couple at a party as we

relived the trauma of having to rehome delinquent dogs. I remember their dog’s name, Charlie, but not theirs, yet I will never forget how much better I felt the next day for having spoken to

them. When you snuffle out these random commonalities, it is exhilarating, like falling in love with none of the messy aftermath. You have them in the women’s toilets at clubs, over an

illicit cigarette in the garden, queuing for drinks in a bar. To use EM Forster’s words that have now become a cliché, “only connect”. It is these interactions that make us human. This might

sound shallow in the face of the profound dangers of a pandemic. “Why can’t you stay at home instead of killing granny?” we’re told by people who’ve always hated going out. It is the

revenge of the introverts – for most of human history, they’ve been told they’re weird and wrong for preferring to hunker down, but at last their self-reliance became a strength. But some of

us feed on the exchange of energy with others in order to feel alive. Even someone as clever as Zadie Smith admitted in a Radio 4 interview that lockdown forced her to recognise that she

had few inner resources. Of course, I don’t need to drink mulled wine wearing my star-shaped earrings while listening to Michael Bublé, but I want to, I really want to. I will lateral-flow

test, I will wear a mask in shops and on buses, I will wash my hands. But, as the Beastie Boys song title says, (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)!