I don’t care how far they were from earth, they were nowhere near each other, and ISON certainly was not “passing through” the tail of Lovejoy. On December 10th, ISON’s remains were a third of an AU away from Lovejoy, that’s over 30 million miles.
And the intersection of the two were reported on Dec 6, 2013, not on Dec 1st, 2013.