christmas Archives

Tuesday

November 14, 2023

Baking mistakes: my Christmas clangers

In a world full of muffins, they say, be a cupcake. As an inspirational saying, it’s a good effort. But handsome is as handsome does: for solid worth, texture and deliciousness, give me the muffin every time. I remain open-minded and willing to be proven wrong, but it seems to me that however gloriously frosted, sprinkled, beflowered or bedazzled the exterior of a cupcake may be, its interior texture is always trying, in a socially anxious sort of way, to be cake. All the icing in the world can’t hide the strain. Allow me to suggest an alternative: in a world of Christmas cookies, be homemade shortbread. The last word in simplicity, shortbread is the Hermès scarf of the cookie world. It has confidence, identity, classical elegance.

Hannah Moore

A cowboy Christmas

Christmas dinner for American pioneers was modeled on an English Christmas, for those who could afford it. Families with enough money served turkey, plum pudding, preserved fruits, mince pies, meringues and perhaps even a fresh ham. Children in the Midwest might wake on Christmas morning to find strings of candy and raisins draped on the tree, and wafers, gingerbread or oranges hidden in their stockings. Parents would give gifts of wooden toys, dolls made from corn husks, little glass baubles and colored ribbons for the tree. But in remote places on the western frontier, Christmas often meant providing food and accommodation for travelers and strangers.

Daniel Darling

In praise of Hallmark Christmas movies

You think the Christmas season starts when the Christmas decorations entirely take over Hobby Lobby at the first of November. Or the night of Thanksgiving when, full of turkey, you make your first gift purchase on Amazon. Or for us Christians, the first Sunday in December when kids bug us for that piece of chocolate and we begin reading about the birth of Christ. But we all know Christmas started earlier, perhaps back in October, when your wife began to turn her heart toward the Hallmark channel. Here is some advice from a happily married man of more than two decades: you won’t defeat Hallmark this year. You can only hope to contain it.

Thursday

August 31, 2023

Tim Rice

Yes, it’s too early for pumpkin beer

The biggest purveyor of misinformation at the moment isn’t a podcast host or a foreign adversary. It’s a brewery. Since announcing the release of its flagship Pumpkinhead Ale on August 1, Shipyard Brewing has commenced a cheeky ad campaign declaring that the dog days of summer are actually the perfect time to enjoy a fall beer. As Americans battle oppressive heat and humidity, the Portland, Maine, brewery has flooded its Instagram with photos of people sipping pumpkin ale on boats, and posts boldly declaring “Pumpkinhead Season is HERE!” It shouldn’t be. Dropping pumpkin beers in the summer is a big mistake, and not because fall beers are inherently bad — quite the contrary.

Tuesday

January 3, 2023

Amber Duke

On the hunt for my fiancé’s Christmas shotgun

A platitude oft repeated by left-wing activists is that its easier to buy a gun in the United States than it is to purchase medicine or vote. Feminists similarly like to say that American women have fewer rights than firearms. If anyone on the left would like to test these obviously absurd claims, I would challenge them to start by trying to buy a Benelli M2 Field Shotgun. I went down the Benelli rabbit hole a couple of months ago after my fiancé told me he wanted one for Christmas. When I discovered the hefty price tag on an M2, I somewhat jokingly protested à la A Christmas Story that he might shoot his eye out. Just like young Ralphie, my fiancé was undeterred.

Monday

December 26, 2022

Bill McMorris

The humble minivan beats holiday airline travel

Had Benjamin Franklin stuck around another two centuries, he would have added “Holidays Promise Travel Hell” headlines to his list of life’s certainties, though the Hellfire Club’s most famous member would no doubt take umbrage at the implication. The featured players in America’s security theater, as well as its taxpayer-bailed-out airlines, rival only deadbeat dads in their inability to prepare for annual celebrations. There’s a reason transportation secretary and closet-2024 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg flies private these days, even as he reassures frustrated flyers about the abundant supply of useless meal vouchers and travel credits on offer from America’s most incompetent industry.

Saturday

December 24, 2022

Ben Domenech

A Winston Churchill Christmas

On Christmas Eve 1941, in Washington on a diplomatic mission to organize the support of Britain's American allies in the efforts to stop the Nazi menace, Winston Churchill was offered the opportunity to address the American people from the south portico of the White House. America as a nation had been attacked like never before just weeks earlier; the horrors of Pearl Harbor were on the minds of every patriot. It was rumored the annual Christmas Tree lighting would be canceled. Instead, 20,000 people came to see it, seeking some light in a very dark world. Just two days later, Churchill would deliver a historic political address in the US Senate chambers to a packed audience.

Daniel Darling

Christmas is a story of hope

We descended, one weary traveler at a time, down an ancient stone staircase that winds underneath one of the oldest churches in the world. When we arrive in the tiny grotto, we sing Silent Night, our faces dimly lit by the light of a single lantern. This is where many believe a peasant couple, traveling for the Roman census, gave birth to the baby Jesus as described in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. The Church of the Nativity, commissioned around 330 AD by Constantine, was destroyed by an invading army in 529 AD and then rebuilt by Justinian. Situated in perhaps the most highly contested piece of real estate in the world, it hosts millions of pilgrims every year. This would have been a surprise to the Bethlehem of Jesus’s day.

Tuesday

December 13, 2022

Amy Rose Everett

A Christmas gift guide for her

That damn month is here again. The one where I commit to a new part-time job, my regular "to-do" list punctuated with gift research. But not researching what to buy my loved ones, you understand. Researching what they can buy me. The panicked phone calls started in mid-November. “Darling, have you thought about what you’d like for Christmas? We’d really like to get it all out of the way as soon as possible.” “Babe, what am I buying you for Christmas?” “SOS. Grandma wants to know how much money to put in your card.” I know. An itemized list isn’t really in the spirit of things. But it makes them happy, so I gave up on that line of argument circa 2014. And hey, at least I can give you a few ideas while I’m at it.

Amy Rose Everett

A Christmas gift guide for him

This year, I decided to get organized. I started compiling a list of cool gadgets and gizmos I’ve spotted my male friends using, or that I’ve seen in shop windows, back in summer. All ready for this glorious moment. That is, the moment where I have to turn my head to what Christmas gifts I’m going to buy my father, brother and grandfather. Little did I know that The Spectator World would ask me to write a gift guide, too. Cheers, past me! And cheers to you. Here are the ideas I squirreled away (many of which have crept onto my own Christmas list). Aeropress Original & Go Coffee Maker Bundle For the coffee lover who’ll never settle for a bad brew.

Wednesday

December 7, 2022

Amy Rose Everett

A Christmas gift guide for foodies

I’m hungry, so I know it has begun. December. The month when the kitchen transforms into a battleground, no soldier safe from its vigilant sniper’s gaze. Seemingly innocuous snacking is off-limits: one must assume that everything edible — everything — has been squirreled away for festive drop-ins, cocktail parties and The Big Day. “Wait! Don’t open that. It’s the Christmas wine.” “Hey. Don’t even think about it. That’s a gift for Auntie Jo.” “Put those back! They’re the Christmas Eve cashews.” We must struggle with bizarre concepts like “having a banana” or “waiting until dinner.” Or, do as I do. Continue in vain, scribbling an IOU list that grows as long as my belly grows round. I’ll buy it back tomorrow. Of course I will.

Amy Rose Everett

A Christmas gift guide for dads

Buying for your dad. The man you would quite literally be nowhere without. Should be easy. Never is. Ask him what he wants, and I’d put good money on one of these responses: "Nothing." "A winning lottery ticket." Or my personal favorite, "A break." But look, whether he’s a meat and potato kinda guy or actually quite surprisingly into *insert niche cuisine here*, start with something edible. The man’s got to eat. Next, think about something he might actually use — that he’d never think to buy himself. You might have to spend some time working his new gadget/tool/sweater into his routine, but once the work’s been done it’s generally a pleasure to introduce a cool new thingamajiggy into your old man’s day-to-day.

Monday

December 5, 2022

Amy Rose Everett

A Christmas gift guide for moms

For your perusal, I have spent a good chunk of my day surveying the moms in my life. My grandmother, my mother, my friends navigating the first throes of child-rearing. What would they delight in finding under the tree this year? “Sleep,” the new moms say. Well, I can’t help much with that. But I can recommend a bunch of excellent products. Delight the mothers in your life with a couple of items from this list (and if she’s really sleep-deprived, I’m telling you, buy the Lush pillow spray). Dyson Airwrap Styler Quite simply the item at the top of the wish list for every woman I surveyed while researching this gift guide. No extreme heat, beautiful salon-style hair in minutes.

Tuesday

November 29, 2022

Cockburn

Invite Cockburn to your Christmas party

The last of Mrs. Cockburn’s turkey was scraped into the trash can late on Monday night. As she trudged up the stoop of her Dupont Circle manse, she caught a glimpse of her bedraggled husband through the window. Dimly lit by the glow of their hearth, Cockburn was slumped in his armchair, eyes twitching with discomfort. Both sleeves of his Charles Tyrwhitt shirt were rolled up; an IV drip was affixed to each forearm. The crumpled correspondent shifted in his corduroys as the clear fluids trickled in. Mrs. Cockburn shook her head as she entered the house and headed straight upstairs. “The Ritual” had begun early this year. Cockburn usually wouldn’t kick off his fierce pre-party season hydration regimen until Advent at least.

Monday

November 21, 2022

Bridget Phetasy

Have yourself a very basic Christmas

Humbug! I’ve written before in these pages about how much I loathe Christmas. It’s not just Christmas though: with the exception of Thanksgiving, because it’s all about eating and gratitude and football, I could never stand any of the holidays. This has gradually abated over the years as I’ve started creating traditions of my own here in Los Angeles, but I still resent the feeling of obligation. Then this year, a neighbor asked, “What’s your daughter going to be for Halloween?” That was the moment it struck me — I’m going to have to fully engage in the holidays now. All of them. No more hiding under the bed and letting them blow over. Turning off the lights and pretending Halloween doesn’t exist is not an option.

Ross Anderson

The return of Lindsay Lohan

Falling for Christmas has a ridiculous logline: “Newly engaged, spoiled hotel heiress gets into a skiing accident, suffers from total amnesia and finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner and his precocious daughter in the days leading up to Christmas.” The Netflix romp is notable only as it marks Lindsay Lohan’s return to a genre that made her famous. “It’s such a refreshing, heartwarming romantic comedy and I miss doing those kinds of movies,” Lohan told Netflix, in earnest, while describing her character as, “Extravagant. Temperamental. Glamorous.” You could build a campy slasher flick or porno off such plot scaffolding; none would be great cinema. And yet Falling for Christmas is more complicated than that. Why?

Hannah Moore

A gingerbread house divided

To celebrate my birthday, which falls six days before Christmas, my mother used to make gingerbread houses for me and a dozen of my friends. Every December, she set to work baking sheet after sheet of gingerbread. The baking would take up the first week of the month, and in the second she would assemble the houses, laying their icing foundations and sealing the four walls with crisp white frosting. These would dry in the basement laundry room, taking up every available surface. After school, I would peep at the houses and dream about my party. On the big day, my mom set out each perfect house at the formal dining room table, and we convened to decorate them.

Calla Jones Corner

My smorgasbord of Christmas traditions

Like many American families with multicultural members, my own family incorporates traditions to reflect different ways to celebrate Christmas. I count seven besides American: Swedish, English, Scottish, German, French, Swiss, Belgian. The first five are in the family DNA. The remaining two reflect countries where we have lived and raised our children. Growing up with Swedish immigrant grandparents under the same roof, my Christmas took on many Swedish customs, starting on December 13 with the celebration of Santa Lucia. Legend has it that the fourth-century saint was a child-martyr who brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs. A young girl is dressed as the saint, in virginal white, sashed in red, representing a baptismal robe and the blood of martyrdom.

Priscilla M. Jensen

The magic of Christmas caroling

On Christmas Eve it began to snow. No one believed it at first; Christmas snow is very rare here and usually the hot air from our nation’s capital a few miles away keeps it too warm. But it was Christmas Eve and it was snowing, late in the afternoon before all the light was gone, a snowglobe snow that stopped us in our bustlings and meltdowns and general atmosphere of excited dread. It was just magical. The children were old enough not to count on snow and young enough to think of it as entirely fitting. And they were old enough to know some songs and young enough not to be embarrassed all that much by their parents. “Let’s go caroling,” I said. We’d unpacked the Santa hats; they and various wreaths of those silver sleigh bells were already lost around the house.

Monday

January 24, 2022

Roger Kimball

Delicious wines from the Omicron Open

Some people think that it is the job of a wine critic to discover great bargains in the world of bottles and impart the news in hushed but excited tones to the madding crowds. Maybe that’s part of the remit. I incline, however, to this piece of wisdom from George Saintsbury, prosodist to the stars and incomparable, if quirky, cicerone to the fructum vitis et operis manuum hominum, which is to say: wine. “There is no money,” Saintsbury wrote, of the expenditure of which I am less ashamed, or which has given me better value in return, than the price of the liquids chronicled in Notes on a Cellar-Book. When they were good they pleased my senses, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people.