Christmas got real

It was probably for the best

No going back to this, probably.

A very Merry (or Happy, if you speak the Queen’s English) Christmas to those on the Gregorian calendar.

Probably for a lot of people, Christmas this year doesn’t look or feel like what they’re accustomed to.

Your humble Moscow correspondent was raised in Southern California as a barely-practicing Episcopalian, so Christmastime wasn’t exactly an intensely spiritual occasion. But it was still a very festive and wonderful time of year with warm family gatherings and many cherished memories.

There were also many Christmastime traditions, like watching old films with our mother. When we think back to pre-COVID American Christmas, the first thing that comes to mind is elegant Barbara Stanwyck lighting a cigarette for handsomepants Dennis Morgan in Christmas in Connecticut.

It’s a charming film and if you think you’re too good for it, or for 1940s Hollywood cigarette marketing, we weep for your badly battered soul.

This year things are a bit different. We now observe the Julian calendar. But also, Christmas feels more like this:

Christmas 2021

It is what it is.

Typically around this time of year you hear a lot about peace on earth and goodwill to all men. We fully endorse this message but we would like to propose an addendum—one penned by the original neckbeard virgin blogger, Hank Thoreau (did you know he even used to write for The Atlantic?):

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen.

Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?

In a world—including Russia, sorry!—full of QR codes, compulsory genetic injections, lockdowns, non-essential businesses and a broad assortment of other insanity designed to cripple the human spirit, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves, openly and honestly: Am I being unreasonable for wanting to be treated like a human being?

We all wanted the Barbara Stanwyck version of Christmas—good heavens she’s pretty! But we got the 4chan demon war instead.

All the same, Merry Christmas. It’ll all work out in the end.

—riley