Solvang's Covid Christmas

Sometimes we watch sappy Hallmark Christmas movies, about one in eight is somewhat decent.  A month or two ago there was one about Solvang, a town about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara, California.  

-- "A very charming Christmas town," Santa Ynez Valley Star

Solvang's "unique selling proposition" is that the architectural style of the central business district is Old Dutch style, although they say it's Danish, and as a result it's a big tourist destination.

As we know, the pandemic has decimated retail and hospitality businesses generally ("Pandemic Closures Devastate Restaurant Industry’s Middle Class," New York Times), small business ("COVID-19 devastated California’s small businesses. Here are three that didn’t survive," Los Angeles Times), commercial districts specifically, and tourism especially ("IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK ON INTERNATIONAL TOURISM," UNWTO; "The pandemic is hurting tourism," Baltimore Sun).

Because the Republican Senate is resistant to most forms of financial support for these types of businesses and destinations, they're hurting.  Many thousands of businesses have shut their doors, and in these sectors, unemployment is rampant.

A result, many businesses and tourist destinations are pushed to stay open in the face of inadequate federal assistance -- states and localities are providing some assistance beyond that of the federal government, but with budget issues of their own, it's not enough.

Even though we know that it's a bad idea because of the prevalence of the coronavirus.  The Sturgis motorcycle rally is but one example of event tourism being a bad idea right now ("How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest," Washington Post).

Eating in restaurants, being indoors for long periods of time, etc., are really bad ideas.

So when I saw an article ("A small tourist town is refusing to comply with California's shutdown. It may not be the only one," San Francisco Chronicle) that Solvang is defying covid restriction orders, because of economic desperation, I thought, that's not a movie you're going to see on Hallmark...