Christmas

Monday

Amber Duke

Melania’s au revoir to Christmas

From our US edition

Washington DC It’s still dark outside and dumping rain as the media waits for the annual White House Holiday Decor preview. The weather’s not as cold as last year and there isn’t the same cinnamon-sugar smell of cookies wafting from the East Room basement but it’s still enough to prompt complaints from members of the press. I am kind of enjoying it. I know that it’s probably one of the last times the Trump family can subject the media to some misery while still in office. This year’s Christmas decorations will probably be more contentious than ever thanks to that leaked audio recording of Melania questioning ‘who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff?

Friday

Dr Chris Papadopoulos

The case against the new Christmas Covid rules

‘The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe.’ These are the government’s own words. Yet, despite this almost sacred pledge, the four administrations of the UK have agreed to gamble on relaxing restrictions over Christmas, potentially rewarding Covid-19 with the biggest present of them all. With any gamble, there are stakes, risks and prizes. The stakes in this case are people’s lives — they could not, therefore, be any higher. As for prizes, there are several that officials seem to be eyeing up. First is the prize of perceived compassion: that citizens see a commitment to balance, moderation, and kindness after the pain of a very difficult year. This seems a noble intention.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Christmas is on, Trump is off and Piglet stars on a 50p piece

Home The AstraZeneca vaccine developed by the University of Oxford was found to be 70 per cent effective — 90 per cent among those given a half-sized first dose and a full-sized second dose. It does not require supercooling. The United Kingdom had ordered 100 million doses. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 22 November, total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 54,626 including 2,860 in the past week, compared with 2,878 the week before. The proportion of secondary school pupils absent for reasons connected to Covid-19 rose to 22 per cent. Travellers from abroad would from 15 December be allowed to pay for a coronavirus test after five days’ quarantine and be let out if it proved negative.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my boss giving me a Christmas hamper?

Q. For many years my boss gave each member of his small team a very generous Christmas gift voucher from John Lewis. I was always able to put this to good use and looked forward to receiving it. Unfortunately he decided last year that these vouchers were a bit unfestive and instead we each received a large hamper from an upmarket grocer. While I know that some of my colleagues actually preferred the hamper, my husband and I were disappointed. Crystallised ginger, truffle crisps, mini Christmas puddings and jars of obscure paté sadly do not suit our perhaps unsophisticated palates, although we managed to regift most of it quite successfully.

The Spectator

Which countries are most sceptical about vaccines?

Gloss over Should we be worried that the head of research into respiratory drugs at AstraZeneca is called Dr Pangalos, given that his near namesake, Dr Pangloss, is a byword for foolish optimism? Dr Pangloss was tutor to Candide in Voltaire’s satire on Gottfried Leibniz’s work on theodicy: the attempt to reconcile why a benevolent and all-powerful God should allow evil, tragedy — or a pandemic — to exist. Dr Pangloss’s favourite phrase, ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’, encapsulates Leibniz’s belief that the Earth, for all its apparent faults, was the best that God could possibly have created.

Laurie Graham

The infantilism of Advent calendars for grown-ups

Long ago and far away, small children used to arm-wrestle their siblings for the privilege of opening a door in a cardboard Advent calendar. It was reward enough to find a picture of an angel or an awestruck donkey. How quaint that now seems. Because then Cadbury saw an opportunity and launched an alternative calendar, with little chocolate inducements. I mean, which would you choose, the donkey or a chocolate button? It was a no-brainer. Childhood, which used to end around the time you were tall enough to reach a clocking-in machine, now drifts on and on. Grown men forget to leave home, women in their fifties buy colouring books, and we are all exhorted to cosset our inner infant. Treat yourself. Go on, you know you deserve it.

Rachel Johnson

I was dreaming of a cancelled Christmas

I am on the record as being, if not a convicted seasonal denier, at least insufficiently Christmassy. Last year I interviewed Noel Gallagher for the Christmas cover of a magazine and we bonded over our mutual dread of what our American friends call, dispiritingly, holidays. ‘Christmas Day’s the longest day, longer than D-Day — and more stressful,’ he moaned. ‘You’re sitting there exhausted, thinking, “And it’s only 11 o’clock”.’ For the avoidance of doubt, I love Christmas trees, holly, mistletoe, church services, chestnut stuffing and mince pies.

Wednesday

Olivia Potts

Cook like a royal: inside the Queen’s Christmas pudding recipe

From our US edition

This Sunday was the last Sunday before advent, making it Stir-up Sunday, the day when Christmas puddings are traditionally made and cooked. This year, the British royal kitchens stirred up their own excitement by taking to Twitter, using the official Royal family account (@royalfamily) to share their special Christmas pud recipe. https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1330432598552809472 An emoji-filled tweet told us that, for all their embracing of modern social media, the royals are traditionalists when it comes to their puddings: suet may have fallen out of fashion with many, but the royals still favor a suet-based pud, rather than butter.

christmas pudding

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

A Jewish view on lifting lockdown for Christmas

I never expected to become a fake Rabbi. But this year, on Yom Kippur of all days, it happened. In the middle of the Pandemic, Jews were faced with the problem of marking the holiest day of the year without being able to meet up even for prayer. Communal prayer is a central feature of Judaism, especially on the day when we collectively atone for our sins. As the day approached, my family’s discussions (by FaceTime, of course) increasingly focused on how depressing it was going to be sitting at home alone, not eating. An idea quietly formed in my mind. What if I could put on some sort of Covid-safe substitute?

Sunday

Robert Peston

It will be a three-family, five-day Christmas

Nothing will be decided in a formal sense until all four nations of the United Kingdom are as one. And the decision is slightly harder because Northern Ireland's leadership wants a Christmas consensus with Dublin. But it is looking highly probable that all four UK governments’ special Christmas exemption from coronavirus restrictions will allow us to socialise with people from two households in addition to our own household over five days beginning on 23rd of December and ending on 27th December. Or to put it another way, for those five days, a typical family will be able to enjoy festive meals indoors with both sets of grandparents, or two groups of friends, or whomever is most special to them.

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

No. 10’s Christmas trade-offs

The government’s Covid-19 strategy is designed to keep Christmas gatherings on the cards. But what might be the trade-offs? At this morning’s Downing Street press conference on Covid-19 data, Public Health England's Dr Susan Hopkins and deputy chief scientific adviser professor Dame Angela McLean gave some indication of what tactics could be used to make Christmas week feel as normal as possible. Dr Hopkins referenced Sage advice, suggesting that ‘for every day we release, we’ll need two days of tighter restrictions'. (Public Health England has since issued a correction to this statement, saying every day of 'release' will require five days of increased restrictions.

Sunday

Kate Andrews

Backsliding on a lockdown end-date has begun already

Will England’s lockdown end on 2 December? Even before this morning’s media round there was good reason to suspect it might not. The first national lockdown - we were originally told - would be for three weeks, with the explicit aim of building more capacity in the National Health Service. But the goalposts shifted and three weeks turned into more than three months: despite daily Covid deaths peaking in April, pubs and restaurants didn’t reopen until early July. Weeks later gyms and other leisure sectors followed, and public transport guidance changed to encourage employees back to their offices.

Saturday

Amber Duke

‘The Melania Tapes’ reveal she’s even cooler than we thought

From our US edition

Just a couple of hours before President Trump announced that he and his wife, first lady Melania, had tested positive for coronavirus, the world was exposed to the so-called ‘Melania Tapes’. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend of the first lady, released to CNN multiple recordings she took of her private conversations with Melania. Leftists who already despise the first lady raged about how she supposedly 'hates' Christmas and doesn't care about migrant children. However, the tapes actually revealed a deeply sympathetic and relatable figure belied by Melania's somewhat aloof and statuesque public persona. 'I'm working...my ass off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?

melania

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

My recipe to cure a hangover

Journalists exaggerate, often reaching for superlatives to chronicle mildly interesting events. Even so, there are times when it is necessary to become hyperbolic. 2019 was an extraordinary year. As Chou En-lai might have said, it is too early to assess its significance. We will be doing that for at least the next 20 years. Indeed, it may turn out to be one of the most important dates in our peacetime history. The new year has also started with a bang. It was cunning of the government to persuade Donald Trump to drive Dominic Cummings out of the headlines, but that will not exhaust 2020’s disruptive potential. Exhaustion leads one to the end of Christmas.

Wednesday

Dominic Green

The hope of Chanukah

From our US edition

The neighbors got together for drinks and carols at the weekend. As an English Jew, I love the carols — all those old-time bangers from the time when midwinter really was bleak, all those Zionist lyrics about ‘royal David’s city’ and kings in Israel. I consider it a mitzvah, a religious obligation, to spread the joy, because there’s not enough joy to the world these days, so I play the piano, this year in an impromptu trio with an Irish American fiddler and an English literary critic who, it transpires, toots a mean descant on the trumpet. We spread the joy as a farmer spreads muck, but it’s the spirit that counts. Without rehearsal or premeditation, we turned ‘Silent Night’ into a Dean Martin drunk song.

chanukah

Monday

Luke Haines

Christmas crackers: the tragic soul of Natalie Cole

From our US edition

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. As any Yule fool knows, there’s no Christmas album like an old Christmas album. But there’s not many of them. We’ve had plenty of classic Christmas singles but hardly any classic Christmas albums. In fact, since little Phil Spector went and ‘canceled’ himself and the life of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003, there is only one. Nowadays, a double-sided helping of Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You from 1963 would have the most ardent Wall Of Sound fan hearing sirens, not sleigh bells.

natalie cole

Wednesday

Dr Sebastian Gorka, DrG, FBE, CPA

Christmas greatness: a Yuletide sermon

From our US edition

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. ’Tis the season friends. The season to be merry. But also the season to remember. Especially those who gave their everything. For us. Great Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the greatest nation on earth. I speak, of course, of the true meaning of Christmas. The Yuletide. The winter festival. The hinge of the Judeo-Christian cultural year. The subject of so much opprobrium from the secular left. Christmas is under attack. It has to be defended. President Donald Trump is fighting back. But we all have a responsibility to stand up. To say ‘No!

sebastian gorka
Godfrey Elfwick

Godfrey Elfwick’s Nativity drama

From our US edition

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Portland, Oregon How do you survive the festive season when you have a social conscience? Dear reader, allow me to impart to you my experience with this predicament, and some wisdom along the way. Once again, the Chr*stm*s season is upon us. Like a virus, it cares not whom it infects and cannot be completely avoided. I choose not to celebrate this holiday, both as a Muslim atheist and a social-justice progressive. Like Th*nksg*v*ng, Chr*stm*s is a toxic symbol of white heteronormative greed. Like the river of evil slime depicted in Ghostbusters II, it seeps insidiously into the fabric of all our lives.

nativity
Toby Young

Christmas with my brother

Ever since I was a child, I’ve associated Christmas with my mentally disabled brother Chris. Technically, he’s my half-brother — I have four half-siblings and a whole one — but to refer to him that way feels a bit mean-spirited, as if I’m trying to put some distance between us. Is ‘mentally disabled’ the right term to describe him? When I was growing up, the psychiatrists had him down as ‘schizophrenic’, but he was later reclassified as suffering from Asperger’s syndrome. After that particular diagnosis fell out of fashion, he became, simply, ‘autistic’, which is probably accurate, although too vague to convey much about him. Chris has been institutionalised since he was a teenager, either in hospitals or care homes.

The Spectator

Letters: Should conservatives be worried that high-spending Boris has a majority?

My father’s imprisonment Sir: Harald Maass’s piece on the plight of Uyghurs in China (‘A cultural genocide’, December 14) captures the grim reality of what has been happening. Articles like this draw vital attention to the crisis. I am an ethnic Uyghur and live in Belgium with my wife and children. My father, a 58-year-old secondary school teacher from Xinjiang, was jailed in China in April 2018. No reason was provided by the authorities as to why, and there was no trial or any other legal procedure. He was obviously imprisoned just because he is a Uyghur. After 18 months in prison, he was finally released recently and is at home in Xinjiang. Even so, we have only been in touch once — he and all my family members in China are too afraid to be open with me.