TIME, I think, to wheel out my favourite Star Trek quote for its seasonal airing.

No, not “Beam me up, Scotty”, nor the one about living long and prospering. Nor even the one about having Klingons off the starboard bow.

I've used it in my Advertiser View columns before, but just in case you need reminding, it’s this: “Let us redefine progress: to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean we must do that thing.”

It’s similar to, but a bit pithier than, the warnings from Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon this week as they urged people to be careful at the same time as announcing the easing of coronavirus restrictions for Christmas, which will allow a maximum of three households to mix for up to five days from December 23 to 27.

READ MORE: 'Christmas isn't worth the risk this year with an end to Covid crisis in sight'

Headlines about ‘a plan to save Christmas’ have been doing the rounds for a while. And the pressure to do something to put a smile back on the face of hard-pressed Britons, who have now been coping with some form of restrictions for more than eight months, is understandable.

But experience of human nature says that if you give people an inch, too many will take a mile. And if the price of one day’s relaxation of the rules is five days of steeply rising case numbers, as some people who know a lot more about the science than you, me, Mr Johnson and Ms Sturgeon put together are saying, I’m afraid I cannot see how it’s worth it.

I should at this point confess that I am biased. Probably more than I was just a couple of weeks ago. Because in that time, there has been a Covid death in the family.

I won’t bore you with the who, when, how and where, but let’s just say it followed a fairly well-trodden path: underlying health conditions but otherwise fine, one positive Covid test, one unfortunate but inevitable transmission, one hospital admission, one death.

READ MORE: Further death linked to Covid takes Argyll and Bute total to 75

Given that, as I write this, the Covid death toll stands at 3,588 in Scotland and 55,838 across the UK, there’s a fair chance you’ll be familiar with that story. And if so, you may well think, as I do, that the idea that “Christmas has been saved” is hollow at best, downright offensive at worst.

There is cause, in general terms at least, to be optimistic. The first vaccines are on their way, and it seems increasingly likely that some time next year we might get what we all hope for - a return to something approaching a normal life.

And whatever you’ve gone through in the past eight-and-a-bit months, when you glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s natural to follow it.

But – as our leaders have repeatedly told us throughout the pandemic – I’d rather be “guided by the science on this”.

And I’m struggling to find the scientific evidence that says knuckling down, adding one more sacrifice to the long list of those we’ve already made, is a worse option than opening a window to a virus that has taken far too many thousands of lives and devastated thousands more.

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