If a week is a long time in politics, last weekend seemed like an entire government term happening all at once.
Saturday began with ominous soundings about a Christmas lockdown and ended with thousands of people frantically cramming into trains out of London just hours after Boris Johnson effectively cancelled the festive season for most of southern England.
News of the new, fast-spreading, Covid-19 strain was about as welcome as watching that David Attenborough clip of a rare Australian octopus which can slither out of rock-pools and use its suckers to walk on land. No one, particularly the unfortunate crab in the next pool, saw that one coming.
Health secretary Matt Hancock brought us all some Christmas cheer on Sunday morning when he described the new Covid-19 strain as "out of control” - this from the person whose job it is to try and curb the spread.
By Sunday evening, the Republic, France, Germany and several other countries, had banned flights from Britain.
Soon, Dover port was forced to close - the queues of lorries giving us a lovely preview of what is likely to happen when Brexit kicks in on January 1.
Late on Sunday night, the executive was forced to cut relaxation of restrictions over Christmas from five days to one.
The Sunday night news shift, which saw me stress-eating peanut butter straight from the jar and checking the latest news from the executive approximately 1,786 times, felt like those panicky early days of the pandemic all over again.
No one knew quite what was happening, decisions were being made at the eleventh hour, or delayed at a time when there should be no delay.
Although the border remains open at the time of writing, if the Republic reverts to a ban on travelling outside your own county then this will effectively scupper the Christmas plans of hundreds of thousands of people.
My older sister, who has essentially been self-isolating since March, has already resigned herself to staying at home in Co Kildare with a Christmas meal for one. "At least I can watch the EastEnders omnibus without anyone complaining," she told me. It might be one of the grimmest sentences she's ever uttered.
Within a few hours, our own executive went from being praised for its stricter post-Christmas rules to being criticised for not acting quickly enough.
Questions have been asked about why flights from Britain, particularly those coming from tier four areas, were not banned, given the severity of the problem.
While the DUP can't be seen to close the north off from Britain, and Sinn Féin has to be seen to try, the real issue is the border.
Angry callers to several radio shows in the Republic on Monday asked why the border had not been closed given first minister Arlene Foster's acknowledgement that the new Covid-19 strain was probably already in the north. Never mind years of Brexit talks and battles to retain an open border, one whiff of a public health issue and some people in the Republic sounded like they were ready to set up checkpoints themselves.
For the shortest day of the year, Monday certainly felt like the longest. Unfortunately, in such a fast-moving situation, many people still do not have a clear idea of the restrictions. And it's certainly too late for the clear public information campaign we saw in March. All we can hope is that most people exercise some common sense and try to see as few friends or relatives as possible before the inevitable spike of cases in the new year.
We're all facing an uncertain, and for many, lonely Christmas. Like so many, faced with the prospect of being cut off from my loved ones, I tried to find some solace on Sunday. Watching a livestream of the winter solstice at Newgrange, I saw the sun slowly rise until a long beam of light filled the neolithic passage tomb. "We are touching the ancestors," an expert on the tomb said.
Our ancestors knew what we often struggle to remember. There will always be light in the darkness.
Merry Christmas, however you manage to celebrate it.
