From KS

not a carol but from a time of carols

‘Here at the age of 39 I began to be old. I felt stiff and weary in the evenings and reluctant to go out of camp; I developed proprietary claims to certain chairs and newspapers; I regularly drank three glasses of gin before dinner, never more or less, and went to bed immediately after the nine o’clock news. I was always awake and fretful an hour before reveille. Here my last love died.’

Just for a moment, the vicar became the embodiment of that most useful of recently coined words: enshittification. This normally excellent woman, who runs her numerous parishes with passion and aplomb, had donned a squishy poo emoji hat. She stood within the nave of her 800 year-old church, next to the Advent candle, with a brown coiled fake turd on her head. The enshittified vicar explained to the congregation that the message of Christmas is that God visits us in our “poo-ey lives”. Like the Christ child in the “poo-ey stable”, God becomes manifest in our stinking world. The congregation looked ahead glassily. Perhaps somewhere deep in the recesses of the collective unconsciousness, they knew that sermons, the church, Christianity, vicars, hadn’t always been this way, that there had once been a reverent majesty to a Christmas carol service. Thankfully the sermon ended, she took off her scat hat, and everyone sang the remainder of the carols with gusto.

ROME — Christmas is becoming a new front line in Europe’s culture wars.

Far-right parties are claiming the festive season as their own, recasting Christmas as a marker of Christian civilization that is under threat and positioning themselves as its last line of defense against a supposedly hostile, secular left.

The trope echoes a familiar refrain across the Atlantic that was first propagated by Fox News, where hosts have inveighed against a purported “War on Christmas” for years. U.S. President Donald Trump claims to have “brought back” the phrase “Merry Christmas” in the United States, framing it as defiance against political correctness. Now, European far-right parties more usually focused on immigration or law-and-order concerns have adopted similar language, recasting Christmas as the latest battleground in a broader struggle over culture.

I hope they choke on a Season’s Greeting …

My God her voice.

We understand these impulses because they are within each of us.

Set due east from the bright lights of Rockefeller Center and the charming windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany & Co., John Cheever’s “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor” orchestrates a quiet yet bruising confrontation with the moral and spiritual decay of the holiday season. Cheever’s prose — tenaciously passive, quietly merciless — gradually develops like a grainy darkroom negative, slowly tightening its focus to reveal the dark underbelly of Christmas, inside a luxury Sutton Place high-rise and, later, a dank tenement on the Lower East Side. It’s a long cab ride from a wistful Bing Crosby Christmas, but when you arrive home, you’ll be sharpened and sober, and a bit more wary of the season’s traps.

New Yorker link – Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor

A growing majority of Canadians favour “Merry Christmas” as a seasonal greeting, according to a new survey gauging public opinion on a range of festive questions—including when parents should have the “Santa talk” with their children.

Among respondents in the latest Research Co. survey, 67 per cent said they’re partial to “Merry Christmas,” up five percentage points from 2024, and marking a six-year high for the Christmas-specific greeting.

The more-inclusive “Happy Holidays” was preferred by 18 per cent of respondents, down six percentage points from last year, while the rest said they’re either unsure or do not care.

CSIS – The DEI Spys

And a happyish or saddish or ignorish, as is your right, nongendered day of whatever to you too!

— Blazingcatfur (@fancypants_s) December 23, 2025

Hi Everyone and welcome to Day 7 of Reader Fave Carols!

As always your submissions have been wonderful, every year I discover new carols.

Please link your faves in the comments and we’ll play them every evening at 7 pm through the Big Day!

Grab some strong Egg Nog, sit back and ENJOY!

From Buzzy Krumhunger

From quanga

From Canuckguy

From PA Cat

From TruthSerum

From Surele Surele

From P_F

A nativity scene from Latin America was given to Pope Leo XIV to be displayed throughout the Christmas season at the Vatican, carrying a special message that particularly touched the pope: it represents the victory of life and invites us to pray for all abortions perpetrated throughout the world.

Traditionally, the Vatican receives nativity scenes and Christmas trees as gifts to be displayed in the buildings occupied by the pope and in St. Peter’s Square. The nativity scene decorating the Paul VI Hall in the Pope’s residence this year comes from Costa Rica and is entitled Nacimiento Gaudium.

Isn’t this an odd commentary on our times.