For a few years, I would volunteer to work Christmas Day. For another few years, I was required to work Christmas Day. I never saw it as a big deal — when I was more connected to my birth family, we celebrated on the Eve, leaving the holiday itself as a yawning void, so might as well make some money and collect the chip to cash in later, for a holiday you really wanted off. The required-work years were all from home, so it was easy to keep my laptop open and check in every 15 minutes or so. Easy-peasy.
For a newspaper reporter, Christmas is either drudgery or tragedy. Go do a story on the B’nai B’rith volunteers who bring food to firehouses and hospitals — that’s drudgery, as is a bright on the slammed-for-hours Chinese restaurants, full of happy Jews enjoying their own Christmas tradition. Tragedy is the sort of thing that happens somewhere, every year: A fatal accident caused by bad weather or impaired driving. One year in Columbus a guy went to midnight Mass and while he was gone, his house caught fire and his entire family died. (Thanks, God!) Another year, an Alberta-clipper cold snap followed a snowstorm and broke water mains and other infrastructure all over the city. (You learn to carry a pencil at times like that, because pens freeze.) Yet another, a guy who’d robbed a bank and waited to be arrested, just to have a warm place to sleep, was bailed out by a softhearted man who didn’t think anyone should spend Christmas behind bars.
The underwear bomber — that was a Christmas story. As I recall, the editors of a certain Detroit paper couldn’t get a single reporter to answer the phone and roll to the airport to gather whatever fact-shards could be found there. (Damn caller ID!)
In…1979, I believe, unless it was 1978, J.C. and I went to a movie on Christmas Day, then headed to a local radio station, so he could record a review for a show he was contributing to. We got on the elevator with another station employee, who looked at us and said, “It’s a rule: The Jew works Christmas.”
Whatever your tradition, whatever your employment, I hope that if you have to work, someone brings you a nice warm plate of something good to eat, and it’s either as busy or as boring as you like. Maybe bring a book to read.
As for me, I’m reading about Matt Gaetz, who the incoming president of the United States thought qualified to be the top lawyer in the country. That person — incoming president, that is — also is going on again about buying Greenland.
The next four years are going to be long and miserable. But let’s enjoy the last good Christmas in the last good year. I’ll be back sometime after the holiday.
Jeff Gill said on December 23, 2024 at 1:52 pm
Joy of the holiday season to one and all!
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Jeff Borden said on December 23, 2024 at 2:23 pm
This already is one of the worst holidays in my life. My sister died of ALS on Oct. 24. And beyond that, the year has delivered more death, disease and dementia than I could’ve dreamed possible. And the topper is my wife is dealing with agonizing back pain. Four hours at the ER and multiple X-rays yesterday revealed nothing. This means we’re canceling plans to spend Christmas Eve and Day with friends in Kenosha, where the 40-year-old wife and mother of a 5-year-old daughter is confined to a wheelchair with ALS. It’s the perfect capper for a shitty year.
However, I take great solace in knowing President Elmo wants to buy Greenland and retake the Panama Canal. It’s such a bright spot in my gloom.
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Sherri said on December 23, 2024 at 3:03 pm
Matt Gaetz was paying prostitutes and doing drugs and bragging about it to other Congress members. Rep Markwayne Mullins told us that Gaetz would share videos of the women he’d slept with on the House floor, and brag about crushing Viagra and chasing it with energy drinks so he could go all night.
Of course, now Senator Mullins said he trusted Trump’s decision-making process on nominating Gaetz AG.
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Joe Kobiela said on December 23, 2024 at 3:05 pm
If anyone is around the dupage airport, I’ll be having my Christmas dinner at the ihop for the 3rd straight year, flying some people up for the day, I volunteer since my kids are grown and there are no grandkids, it lets the ones with littles be home for the holidays. Stop by and I’ll by you lunch.
Pilot Joe
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alex said on December 23, 2024 at 3:09 pm
The Gaetz story, every last salacious detail, is old news. So’s the fact that he made a lot of enemies who are delighted to twist the knife in his back. It’s all been a teaser for the new reality show Republicans Eating Their Own airing January 20.
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Dexter Friend said on December 23, 2024 at 3:40 pm
Even weirder than the cold bank robber seeking a warm cell, locally in the county a 65 year old man who lived in an unheated loft robbed the US Post office, adjacent to his residence. Of course the window clerk knew the robber, who just handed her a note reading to put some money in an envelope for him. He then just stood by the exit door waiting a couple minutes for the cops. He did 3 months in the regional jail and a compassionate judge sprung him. I met the criminal in a super secret meeting in a church basement, a real jovial man once he got off the fortified vino. One day he threw my bicycle into his truck and drove me home as a hellacious storm was in progress post-meeting. He wanted to tell his story; he said “it was so fucking cold upstairs there I just flipped the fuck out.”
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Brandon said on December 23, 2024 at 3:46 pm
@Jeff Borden: My condolences.
—-
Was that fire in 1980?
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tajalli said on December 23, 2024 at 3:47 pm
(in the voice of Eric Cartman from South Park): G– D— It! Stop calling him Elmo! Elmo is a sweet loving Sesame Street character, not an A–H—!
And not only will they be eating their own, they’ll be eating everyone else too, so the schadenfreude will have soured before you can make pie out of it.
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Dexter Friend said on December 23, 2024 at 3:55 pm
Bully Trump thinks he’s going to take the Panama Canal . No, that is not happening.
He is serious about taking control of Greenland.
Trump laughingly goes out west and says , “no, that’s not going to happen.” , a reference to Musk becoming de facto POTUS. Musk already is de facto President of the United States of America. Joe just commuted all Federal death sentences to life, no parole. The hardliners are outraged, watch then on your favorite cable station. Joe isn’t doing much else. Never in history has a President-elect taken over so early before inauguration.
Perhaps all the security, men with auto-weapons tracking every Luigi Mangione’s step with a machine gun pointed at him, with Mayor Adams going on TV calling Luigi a guilty man , will backfire. Luigi’s lawyer said all this “show” was political, not necessary. Anyway, the orange jumpsuit was returned to Pennsylvania. This thing won’t be in court for more than a year.
My Christmas celebration is over; I received so many gifts from my adult kids and grandkids, they filled the back seat of my truck, and also the passenger’s seat up front. I really must step-up my gifting next year.
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Peter said on December 23, 2024 at 4:27 pm
Someone on another site said it best: “the Geatz report is everything the republicans hoped Hunter Biden’s laptop would be…”
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Julie Robinson said on December 23, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Jeff B, I’m so sorry, that is too much pain. Hoping you can at least do some video chatting with your friends.
You can thank newspaper journalism, that dying beast, for the Matt Gaetz story. We’ve been reading about it locally for months. Most of this report isn’t new to me, except for using email out of his Congressional office to arrange his drug buys, yikes.
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David C said on December 23, 2024 at 5:09 pm
I know how bad back pain can be, Jeff. Just before Covid, I spent four weeks living on the floor with back pain. It’s cold comfort, especially when you’re looking forward to meeting your friends when and when it hurts so damned much, but most episodes resolve in 6-8 weeks without treatment. In the mean time, ice helps some people, heat helps others. Activity, no matter how minor, helps too. When I had my episode, I must have walked back and forth from the back of the house to the front hundreds of times. Probably once for every tear. Beyond that, you just have to ride it out. If she needs further doctoring, go to a physiatrist. They specialize in rehabilitation. When I had pinched nerves in my back and previously in my neck, they were a huge help. Mostly, for reassurance that it would get better. It doesn’t sound like much, but it helps. I hope she feels better soon.
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Deborah said on December 23, 2024 at 6:26 pm
Jeff B, so sorry to hear about your awful year and now your wife’s back pain. Been there, done that, had surgery. But I heard about something recently that I thought was interesting and lots of people don’t know this, that gall bladder issues can cause severe back pain and is often overlooked when getting medical help in hospitals. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Hoping we get our car tomorrow. LB is house/dog sitting and will need to take an Uber to get here to the condo for our celebration tomorrow evening unless we get our car earlier. She’s worried that it might be hard to get an Uber back to her dog responsibilities later that evening if we still don’t have a car. I’m wondering about that too.
Christmas day is always a bust for us too since we do our holiday on Christmas Eve, always have. We usually relax and have leftovers, mostly read books we’ve gotten as gifts.
I mentioned this in the previous post thread in regard to Trump’s Greenland/Panama comments, I usually don’t do this, but I’m repeating this here in case you missed it. Charlie Chaplin doing a fantastic pantomime of a dictator. I watched it without sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvu7X_gA_x4
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Brandon said on December 23, 2024 at 7:55 pm
@tajalli: It depends on the Elmo. Musk has the libido of this “wild” one.
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Sherri said on December 23, 2024 at 9:15 pm
I went to a political event last week, and ran into someone from the church I left when Trump was elected. She’s a very nice lady, probably 10 years older than me, and I know her politics are not far from mine. We started talking about why I left the church. I told her that I just could no longer share the Eucharist with Trumpists, that I couldn’t understand a church that didn’t stand up for the least of these. She said, well, we have to live with them.
And that’s the difference, right there. Because, living with them, rather than living with the marginalized, is a choice. I don’t have to live with them. I don’t have to pretend that everything is okay, that we all believe in the same God and follow the same Jesus, when one of us wants mass deportations and anti-trans laws and anti-woke nonsense, and I believe that Love Your Neighbor is the essence of Jesus’s message.
I re-read MLK’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail regularly, just to remind me not to be that person who puts getting along with bigots ahead of caring for the marginalized.
I don’t mean this to sound so critical of the woman. She is a kind, generous, good-hearted woman. I just can’t go along her path.
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Jeff Gill said on December 23, 2024 at 10:44 pm
Jeff B., I hope for what blessings the day can bring. These past twelve months have not brought much joy I’ll grant you, and I admit to feeling like I’m panning for gold through high drifts of gravel & sludge in this past year. Maybe the flecks of hope I’m finding are pyrite. Time will tell; for now my heart is with your situation. Decline & decay are certainly more common.
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