Lump of Coal Awards 2021: January 6 Edition

This year’s recipients of AG’s annual Lump of Coal Awards include several prominent bad boys and girls.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

Aside from the pandemic, no other issue has dominated the daily news cycle and collective fixation of the ruling class more than the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

The events of that day were a gift to the Biden regime and the Democratic Party—which should instantly disabuse anyone of the notion that the Capitol protest was legitimately an organic uprising instead of an inside job orchestrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the FBI to name just a few accomplices.

Since then, every lever of government power in Washington, D.C. has been wielded in a vengeful way against American citizens who dared to protest the rigged 2020 presidential election. The conduct of those in charge has exposed the moral depravity of the people who populate the power center of the world’s greatest country, showing a stark chasm between the inherent goodness and decency of the American people and the sadistic ghouls who call the shots from the Beltway.

The people on this list deserve a far greater punishment than a lump of coal. And this list could be much longer. But since it’s the Christmas season and all, I’ll be charitable.

This year’s naughty list, January 6 version:

Attorney General Merrick Garland: It’s hard to see how Garland could do more damage as a Supreme Court justice than what he’s doing now as the nation’s top lawyer. In all honesty, Garland is more like Biden or Robert Mueller—a grandfatherly disguise to conceal the sinister actors behind the scenes—and it’s actually Lisa Monaco, his deputy, who’s in charge.

But Garland has the title so he deserves the lumps—and the top of this list. The former D.C. Circuit court judge is overseeing the largest criminal investigation in Justice Department history related to January 6. Shamelessly comparing the mostly nonviolent protest that day to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which resulted in the murder of 168 innocent Americans including more than a dozen children under the age of five, Garland has unleashed a ruthless team of line prosecutors to ruin the lives of 700 Americans and counting.

His office has sought pre-trial detention in at least one hundred cases, successfully convincing D.C. District court judges to deny bail to alleged “insurrectionists,” including several not accused of committing any violent crime. (At the same time, Garland announced he will not force thousands of convicted criminals released to home detention under emergency pandemic rules to return to prison.)

More than 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security cameras is “highly sensitive” government material according to Garland; his office insists the footage must remain concealed from the American public. Garland’s prosecutors are bastardizing a vague obstruction statute to criminalize political dissent and turn January 6 trespassers into convicted felons.

When confronted by Representative Tom Massie (R-Ky.) to disclose how many undercover federal agents participated in January 6, Garland acted confused by the question then refused to answer.

The Justice Department is working in tandem with House Democrats and the January 6 select committee. Last month, Garland charged Steve Bannon, a one-time Trump confidante and influencer on the Right, with two counts of contempt of Congress after Bannon refused to comply with committee subpoenas. Other Trump allies including former chief of staff Mark Meadows could face similar charges.

No other attorney general, including Eric Holder, in recent memory has been as openly vindictive, partisan, dishonest, and hostile to the equal application of the law than Merrick Garland.

FBI Director Christopher Wray. One of Trump’s worst appointments—and that’s saying a lot—Chris Wray continues to use his unchecked power to target Republicans. In March, Wray designated January 6 an act of “domestic terror,” which unleashed the full force of law enforcement against suspected “domestic terrorists” involved in the protest—even those accused of low-level offenses such as obstruction or, my personal favorite, “parading” in the Capitol building, an activity considered a Consitutional right until January 6.

For nearly a year, Wray’s FBI has conducted a campaign of terror against American citizens across the country. Families have awakened to pre-dawn FBI raids complete with dozens of armed agents and armored vehicles including trucks equipped with battering rams to knock down front doors. Agents have interrogated suspects without a lawyer present, refused to present search warrants when asked, and confiscated personal items that have no relevance to what happened on January 6.

Wray’s FBI has issued geofence warrants to collect cell phone data on anyone in the nation’s capital on January 6, an egregious privacy violation. FBI investigators have subpoenaed tech companies to retrieve deleted social media posts, text messages, and other personal information.

At the same time, Wray refuses to disclose how many FBI informants were deployed by his office before and during January 6. In September, the New York Times confirmed at least two confidential sources were embedded in the Proud Boys, a militia group Wray considers a domestic terror threat, months before the Capitol protest.

The FBI’s Twitter account routinely posts photos of its “most wanted” suspects related to January 6.

And he still hasn’t caught the alleged “pipe bomber” who set explosive devices outside the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee on January 5.

The D.C. District Court: Justice is not blind before the judges sitting on one of the most powerful courts in the country. Every judge—whether appointed by Trump or Obama or Reagan—is playing along with the Justice Department’s abusive prosecution of Capitol defendants.

Judges routinely describe January 6 as a “riot” or an “insurrection.” The presumption of innocence has been torched as judges turn pretrial detention hearings into ex parte trials where protesters have no chance to defend themselves against biased judges carrying out the regime’s commands.

Each judge has signed off on an least one pretrial detention order, sending even nonviolent offenders to languish in the D.C. Gulag. At the same time, the same judges push trial dates into the middle of next year, repeatedly excluding time from the speedy trial clock (which is 70 days) and tolerating the government’s lengthy delays in discovery and Brady rule obligations.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell actually scolded the Justice Department for going too light on January 6 defendants by not recommending harsher sentences and by lowballing damage estimates.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, has sentenced trespassers to jail time, even in cases where prosecutors have recommended home detention.

The entire bench is a national disgrace.

United States Capitol Police: Far from the friendly mall-cop types who monitor the metal detectors or help tourists find their way around, Capitol Police, for the most part, acted like stormtroopers on January 6. Capitol Police joined D.C. Metro cops in attacking crowds of peaceful protesters assembled outside the building early that afternoon, dousing people with tear gas, launching pepper balls, and standing by as D.C. Metro cops deployed flashbangs and sting balls filled with rubber bullets.

Hundreds of protesters were let into the building by Capitol police officers at different vantage points, setting them up for trespassing charges weeks and months later.

USCP lieutenant Michael Byrd shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed female veteran, at near point-blank range. Unlike every other police officer involved in a fatal shooting, however, Byrd’s identity was concealed for months. Capitol Police refused to disclose his name and later exonerated him of any wrongdoing.

USCP initiated the lie that Officer Brian Sicknick died after he was attacked by protesters on January 6. Even after the D.C. coroner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes, Capitol Police to this day continue to lie that Sicknick was killed in the line of duty.

Democrats, at a time when police departments around the country are falling victim to the “defund the police” movement, rewarded USCP this year with a nearly $2 billion budget boost; now Democrats want to open satellite USCP offices in other states, far exceeding the agency’s authority.

Other worthy recipients: D.C. Department of Corrections for torturingJanuary 6 detainees; Representatives Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for their mere existence; Congressional Republicans for refusing to speak against this travesty of justice; and Donald Trump for not using his platform routinely to defend his supporters now vilified as “insurrectionists.”

Please pray for those ensnared in this cruel, un-American prosecution. And pray for karma to catch up with everyone else.

Merry Christmas!

And we Know, James Red Pills America, and more-Dec 25

 

Hope you all had an amazing Christmas! 🌲 Got a little bit of news to report:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/merry-christmas-2021-us-child-born-us-son-given/

With Malice Toward All

Biden’s Christmas message is the most ahistorical and antagonistic message of its kind, for it is without charity or kindness.

by Bill Asher for American Greatness

When it becomes necessary for a leader to relinquish trust in order to restore it, and devote himself to the duties of his office by not seeking another term in office, a leader honors the people. We have Joe Biden instead, who has malice toward one-third or more of the American people. To the unvaccinated, he forecasts a winter of severe illness and death. He damns the living, libeling them with the blood of innocents, days before the birthday of the Nazarene whose blood cleanses us from all sin. This is Joe Biden’s Christmas message.

The message is from a Catholic who speaks like a Calvinist, adjudging others—grouping together over a hundred million Americans—to eternal death. 

The message is that the sick are wicked, and healing the wicked is a sin, because those who would overwhelm hospitals deserve to die.

The message from the Roosevelt Room of the White House betrays both Roosevelts, contradicting TR’s definition of patriotism—that it is unpatriotic not to oppose a president who fails in his duty—and FDR’s prayer for “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” 

Biden’s message is the most ahistorical and antagonistic message of its kind, for it is without charity or kindness; and yet it is the most authentic message of its kind, for Biden has no charity or kindness for his fellow Americans. 

His message is also a tell, that he cannot tell time, because no president with a sense of decency—no Catholic with the conscience of a Christian—would deliver this message. No other president would offer nothing but fear and blood, or wear a mask while attempting to scare Americans to death. But Joe Biden is like no other president, just as his press secretary, Jen Psaki, is like no other spokesperson for the president.

The latter is glib about everything from shortages to surging prices, dismissing a navy of cargo and container ships—the vessels lining the view outside the Port of Los Angeles—as bearers of irrelevant goods, while blaming inflation on the greed of those who sell goods and services.

As for the former, we should be so lucky.

As a former president, safe in his basement and secure in the benefits of the Former Presidents Act, every day can be Christmas Day for Joe Biden.

When that day comes, whether it comes on the night of November 5, 2024, or the afternoon of January 20, 2025, the day will feel like Christmas.

The day will mark the end of lectures and recriminations, bringing with it the greatest gift of all: the peaceful transfer of power.

May we all live to see that day as God sees fit to give us that day, so we may no longer hide ourselves in daylight or be homebound for the remainder of our days or years.

In the interim, as we build back to better days, let us take time to mourn the dead and pray for the living.

Let us be watchful, patient, and grateful.

Merry Christmas to us all!

Why the Left Doesn’t Like Christmas

"Holly, jolly" is not a left-wing term.

by Dennis Prager for American Greatness

This article was published originally on December 18, 2019

Many on the Left (as opposed to liberals) have been warring on Christmas for more than a generation. Leftists always deny there is a war on Christmas and mock those who claim there is.

There is a mind-blowing chutzpah or lack of self-awareness when people do something and yet deny that they are actually doing it. But the evidence is overwhelming.

The Left has stopped schools from calling Christmas vacations by that name—the name schools called them throughout American history until the last couple of decades. Almost every non-Christian school in America now calls Christmas vacation “winter break.”

Fewer and fewer Americans, stores, companies or media wish people “Merry Christmas,” preferring the neutered “happy holidays” (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas). And in but one generation, virtually every American business has gone from having a “Christmas party” to having a “holiday party.”

Having written in the past about the falsehood of “merry Christmas,” “Christmas vacation” and “Christmas party” not being “inclusive,” I will not reiterate the point here. Suffice it to say that it takes a breathtaking level of narcissism for a non-Christian to be offended by mentions of Christmas and a breathtaking level of meanness to seek to deprive the vast majority of fellow Americans of the public mention of their holiday.

Rather, I want to try to explain why this has happened.

The “inclusive” argument is so absurd—I am a religious Jew and cannot even fathom being offended or feeling “not included” by an invitation to a Christmas party—that there have to be other, or at least additional, reasons for the Left’s neutering of Christmas.

There are.

One is that the Left sees in Christianity its primary ideological and political enemy. And it is right to do so. The only large-scale organized opposition to the Left comes from the traditional Christian community—evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics, and faithful Mormons—and Orthodox Jews. Leftism is a secular religion, and it deems all other religions immoral and false.

From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to George Soros, the Left has regarded religion in general and Christianity in particular as the “opiate of the masses”—a drug that dulls the masses into accepting their oppressed condition and, thereby, keeps them from engaging in revolution.

The Left understands that the more people believe in Christianity (and Judaism), the less chance the Left has to gain power. The Left doesn’t concern itself with Islam, because it perceives Islam as an ally in its war against Western civilization, and because leftists do not have the courage to confront Islam. They know that confronting religious Muslims can be fatal, whereas confronting religious Christians entails no risks.

Second, the Left regards Christianity in America as an intrinsic part of American national identity—an identity it wishes to erode in favor of a “world citizen” identity.

The Left has not only warred against Christmas; it has sought to undermine other national identity holidays. For any number of reasons, not only including the Left, Americans no longer celebrate George Washington’s birthday (it has de facto been replaced by the utterly meaningless “Presidents Day”) or Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, as they did when I was a child, my father was a child and his father was a child. The only American celebrated in a national holiday is Martin Luther King Jr., which is acceptable to the left since he is not white.

One proof of the Left’s desire to undermine specifically American national holidays is its war on the two remaining specifically American holidays: July Fourth and Thanksgiving.

The Left deems Thanksgiving a historical fraud and an immoral celebration of “genocide” of the American Indians—which is what American children are now taught in many American public schools. And “happy Thanksgiving” has been replaced by “happy holidays.” As for July Fourth, The New York Times is leading the undermining of the celebration of America’s birthday by declaring that the real founding of America was 1619, the year, the Times asserts, African slaves first arrived on the American continent.

Of course, there is still Veterans Day and Memorial Day, but they are not specifically American national holidays; just about every country has such holidays.

But Christmas is a problem for the Left. It celebrates religion, and it does so in quintessentially American ways (take American Christmas music, for example).

The third and final reason is that the Left is joyless. Whatever and whomever the Left influences has less joy in life. I have met happy and unhappy liberals, and happy and unhappy conservatives, but I’ve never encountered a happy leftist. And the further left you go, the more angry and unhappy the people you will encounter. Happy women and happy blacks, for example, are far more likely to be conservative than on the Left.

Christmas is just too happy for the Left. “Holly, jolly” is not a left-wing term.

7 Alarming Omicron Symptoms

Babylon Bee🐝

m

We thought we were out of the woods, and that maybe we could enjoy the holidays, but we were wrong. Omicron is upon us, and it is the deadliest plague humanity has ever faced. You probably won't survive. And if you find yourself having any of these Omicron symptoms, you will definitely die. Sorry!

1) Heartburn: If you find yourself with heartburn after eating pizza or onion rings, you probably have Omicron. Been nice knowin' ya. 

 2) Sneezing: Omicron is a perfect killing machine designed to replicate itself by inducing sneezes in the host. Diabolical.

3) Your bones make that weird cracking sound when you get out of a chair: It's the end of the line for you.

4) Being left-handed: To be fair, is life even worth living if you're left-handed? 

5) The sun looks bright when you stare directly at it: President Trump proved he was extremely healthy and Omicron-free when he stared at the sun for several minutes unfazed.

6) Mild soreness after vigorous exercise: Oh no! Also, please sanitize your workout equipment. You may be dead soon, but you don't have to take us with you.

7) Existential dread: Thankfully, this can be cured with a visit to church, a nap, or a burrito. Unless you die of Omicron first. 

7 Tips For Keeping Your Kids Safe When They Have A Handheld Device Giving Them Unfettered Access To Porn

Babylon Bee🐝

So, you got your kid a smartphone. Oops! Big mistake there! Well, now that your child owns a portal providing unfettered access to a smorgasbord of the most horrifically obscene smut the depraved human mind can invent, here are a few foolproof ways to protect your kid!

1) Cast it into the fire: Destroy it! Smash the phone with a hammer! Feed it to sharks! Launch it into space! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? DO IT NOW! 

2) Make your kid pinky-promise to never look at porn: A second option, if you don't want to cast it into the fire and destroy it.

3) Abandon civilization forever: Move to the woods, 1000 miles away from any wifi signal. Live off the grid. Raise goats. Churn butter. 

4) Paste a post-it note reminding them Jesus is always watching: Or at least a picture of Matt Walsh's stern, disapproving face. 

5) Casually check their browser history every couple of years: Kids don't know how to delete their browser history. 

6) Hide in the bedroom closet: Whisper "I'm watching yoooouuu!" from time to time, just to keep them on their toes.

7) Nuke the entire internet from orbit: Just to be safe.

 

Article by Walter Kirn in The Federalist

What Happened When I Decided To Get My Tree From The Mountains On Christmas Eve

 Amanda, my wife, will know the truth about our tree, of course, but hers is a tender heart, so she’ll keep quiet.

It’s Christmas Eve a few years back and I’m shopping for presents for my wife and kids in a Flying J truck stop near Idaho Falls, Idaho, choosing among an array of camo hoodies, American eagle-themed insulated cups, Duck Dynasty ball caps, saw-back hunting knives, and heavy-duty jumper cables. Poor holiday planning has put me in a jam.

I’m bound for my home in Montana, hours away, and I’ve already been on the road for a full day since leaving California, where I had business. The weather turned desperate when I reached Utah — blowing snow and black ice, jackknifed semis in the ditches, far-off police lights revolving red and blue — and my muscles are so cramped from vigilant driving that picking up items from the shelves is painful.

I suppose it’s just as well. There’s not much in stock here that my family will cherish. A lamb’s-wool steering wheel cover? Tire chains?

I call my wife, who’s waiting for me at home, and tell her I screwed up.

“I bought a few things. I expected this,” she says. She pauses to let me admire her omniscience. “The problem is we still need a Christmas tree. Maybe you could get one on your drive.”

“Everything’s closed. I’m in a truck stop.”

“The kids will want one. Aren’t Walmarts open late? Just try, Walt.”

”Sure,” I say. “I’ll try.”

By the time I’m off the phone, I have a plan, a way to redeem myself for my Yuletide carelessness. On one of the racks I saw a folding saw, on another some coils of nylon rope. I’ll cut my own tree and lash it to the car. I even know the perfect place.

An hour north of here, the two-lane highway mounts a plateau and enters a dense wilderness that runs to the western boundary of Yellowstone Park. The woods there were devastated years ago by an infestation of deadly beetles that caused the U.S. Forest Service to replant the area with seedlings that have yet to grow to their full height and many of which have dropped pinecones, creating smaller trees.

As shapely as trees from a commercial nursery, they stand in endless dazzling rows, like tombstones in a veterans’ cemetery, and I’ll have thousands of them from which to choose. Harvesting one may even help the forest, and I certainly won’t be noticed while I work; the highway is as lonesome as they come and tonight, lit only by the Star of Bethlehem and a frozen, ghostly partial moon, it should be deserted.

It’s ten at night and six degrees when I reach the alpine forest. With my high beams switched on, all alone on the dark road, I cruise along and look for a good spot to park on the shoulder and launch my hunt. No spot appears much better than any other, so I pull off at random and search inside my car for gloves or mittens and a winter hat.

No luck; I didn’t need them in California. I decide this is fine because I shouldn’t be out long. I unfold the saw and zip up my light coat and step out into the powdery new snow. It’s packed flat near the car, but once I enter the woods it reaches almost to my knees.

The profusion of suitable trees I expected isn’t evident at first. Some are the proper height but lack girth. Others have girth but are only three feet tall. Most are ten feet tall, or taller, and block the pale trickle of moonlight as I trudge on.

Up ahead, I discern a promising candidate, but when I walk up beside it and examine it, I discover it has no boughs on its backside. Luckily, there’s a nicer one further on, so I head off in its direction. By now I’m suppressing shivers, and my sneakers – canvas; I put them on when I left Malibu — are icy stiff and hard to lift. And the tree turns out to be ugly. Hideous.

My grandparents always bought plastic ones. Smart people.

I am not so smart. This realization strikes me when I notice that my bare right hand, which holds the saw, can no longer feel the saw. I tuck the tool up under my left armpit and blow on the hand, then put it in my pocket. I need to turn back; I’ll warm up and try again.

But which way is back? I have no way to tell. The long straight lines of trees all look identical and lead off in every direction, a nightmare scene. That’s when my Cub Scout experience comes back to me: follow your footsteps. I do so. In a circle. I know it’s a circle because five minutes later I’m standing beside the ugly tree again.

The moment when you know you’re lost – not merely disoriented or confused but truly, irrevocably lost – brings with it a sort of humiliating thrill. Can this really be? You’re alive, your brain is working, and you’re still the same person you were a moment earlier, but suddenly the world itself has changed. It is your foe, and you are not its equal. It requires your surrender. Silence falls.

As a boy, Christmas spooked me. The candles flickering. The formal outfits, the hymns, the organ music. It felt like a funeral, not a birthday party. It felt like the solemn departure of life and light. I loved the gifts, the excitement around the tree, but the approach to this orgy of unwrapping resembled a procession through a graveyard.

One Christmas Eve when I was eight or nine, my parents fought loudly while I was in bed and then I heard my father’s car drive off. It drove off with that sound of a thing that won’t return, which intends to disappear.

In the morning, the early morning, before dawn, my mother materialized in my dark room and quietly ordered me to go on sleeping. “Santa needs more time,” she whispered. I lay there starkly awake for two more hours, aware of a turbulent, lengthy, muffled phone call occurring down the hall.

I prayed and prayed. My prayers felt poignant, they touched me with their sweet sadness, and I knew myself as a tiny, noble soul carrying on in a cosmos beyond his reckoning. Then suddenly I smelled bacon frying downstairs. Bacon and eggs, my father’s favorite breakfast! And a radio playing carols! Oh, Tannenbaum!

I decide to keep walking; otherwise, I’ll freeze. I understand I’ll freeze anyway, eventually, but it seems crucial not to freeze immediately. At least when they find my body, they’ll know I’d tried. I hope my children will respect me for it.

Amanda, my wife, their step-mom, will know the truth, of course – their dad was a fool who’d worn gym shoes into the mountains – but hers is a tender heart, so she’ll keep quiet.

One step. Two steps. Lift those numb, doomed feet. The indomitable human spirit and all that. Even in death my ego is on the job, considering the legend I’ll leave behind. He wrote a few books. Two movies were made from them. He bought a nice house and managed to pay it off.

I hear then the soft, far-off rumble of a large truck. I halt. The noise grows louder and changes pitch. From where is it coming? Or going? The Doppler Effect. How does it work, again? What are its rules?

Then the sound dies away, a spirit leaving earth, but just as it does, I have a brilliant thought: if I keep moving and hear a second truck I can judge by its volume relative to the first one if my steps have led me toward the highway or away from it. It doesn’t matter which direction I go, only that I cover sufficient ground.

I set off like a bull, leaning hard into the snow. It occurs to me then that I haven’t thought things through. If I happen to be moving further from the highway, I may be unable to hear a second truck, assuming there ever is one.

Around this time I see a light. No noise yet, just a light. I have no idea what to make of this development. I’ve reached that stage of hypothermia when brain activity turns to heavy labor, like carrying a mattress or stacking logs. As the light sweeps through the woods it strobes and stutters, which strikes me as potentially instructive, if only I can decode the spectacle.

It turns out that I don’t have to. Because that’s when the sound arrives, the engine roar, stronger, stronger, stronger than the last time, until its intensity matches the brightening lights and the truth of my situation is revealed: I’m 20 yards from the highway, no more than that.

What’s even more astonishing is that I’ve made another circle and am standing again beside the ugly tree, precisely at the point where I first panicked. My mind has tricked me. I wasn’t lost at all. Or I was lost, subjectively, but not objectively – not as seen from above, from an aerial perspective.

If only I’d had an aerial perspective. If only we human beings ever did.

I solve the remaining puzzles from my adventure once I’ve climbed back in the car and turned the heat on and taken off my shoes to warm my toes. Why did the two trucks have different sonic profiles if both were equally near to me?

Not hard. The first truck must have been a small one, a pick-up rather than a semi, and I mistook its quietness for distance. Also, because it was lower to the ground, its lights, for some reason, didn’t pierce the forest. Or maybe I was facing the wrong way. It hardly matters now. I’ve survived. I’ve won.

There is only one problem. I still don’t have a tree.

Part Two

Ten or fifteen miles down the road, I come to a T-junction with a lesser road that runs off to my right into the woods. I see an opportunity and turn. Instead of having to walk to find a tree, I can drive along in comfort and survey my prospects from the car.

I’ll hop out with my little saw and cut it down, lay it on the roof, uncoil the rope, and complete the whole chilly chore in a few minutes, emerging a hero from a night of troubles, with a wonderful story to tell my wife and kids. What’s more, if the gifts my wife already bought prove unworthy of my children’s hopes, the story will compensate—if I tell it well.

The road into the forest is smooth and snow-packed, creating a pleasing crunch beneath my tires. I tool along, scanning. The trees are better here. I pass a dozen good ones, nicely conical, just tall enough to place a star on top of, but my saga deserves the climax of finding a great one.

I drive a bit further, my radio playing carols, considering and rejecting pretty trees. The snow on their boughs brings partridge nests to mind. Does Amanda, my wife, have a bird-shaped ornament? She must, I conclude. She thinks of everything.

A moment later, my tires stops rolling.  A moment after that, my lights go out as my car seat jerks and shudders. I rapidly interpret these odd developments.

My car has sunk straight down into the snow and is sinking still. But then it stops. I pass through amazement to the action stage, my emergency reflexes tuned by recent experience. I push at my door and meet extreme resistance, suggesting I’ve sunken fairly deep.

I roll down my window, lean over and look down, confirming my analysis. Then I climb through the window and drop onto the road, afraid I might sink too. I don’t. The snow feels firm and it supports my weight.

The road, upon inspection, is not a road. It’s a snowmobile trail, professionally groomed and covered in a grid of little squares. Beneath it is a good four feet of snow. My car has penetrated three of these, enough to entirely cover all four wheels as well as the tail pipe. A true disaster. Without a flow of exhaust into the air, I can’t climb back inside it and leave it running so as to maintain my body temperature through what I now know will be an endless night. I console myself by acting logically, the way an intelligent adult might act.

I reach through the window and turn off the ignition, rezip my jacket, look off in every direction, and tilt back my head to admire the midnight sky. NORAD is tracking Santa’s sleigh right now, which is making deliveries in the western time zones. Except to one house. The house without a tree.

On the console between my front car seats, I glimpse my phone, which I doubt gets a signal here. It didn’t earlier. I lean back through the window and reach and grab it. Astonishingly, it turns on and shows one bar. I wait for the bar to vanish but it doesn’t, though I’m sure that it will the moment I try a call. I tap in the relevant numbers: 911.

“Fremont County Sheriff,” says a voice. An Idaho sheriff, a mythic hero figure.

After this, it’s mechanical. A series of chores. A tow truck is called with a winch and a long cable, longer than I imagined a cable could be. It takes about an hour to arrive, during which time I phone Amanda and quell her panic by speaking calmly and clearly and leaving out the dark details of my story.

The truck follows my tire tracks along the trail and stops at the point where they deepen, where it might sink. Then the driver unfurls the cable, which has a hook, and latches it to a spot near my rear bumper. I expect that the process of winching my car backwards through four feet of snow will tear apart the chassis, but my car is a German model, so maybe not.

In the middle of this, a deputy arrives, a moon-faced blonde young woman in a black ski cap. We chat while the cable tugs my car along, slowly at first but then with real momentum, causing it to rise up atop the snow and skid along quite nicely. She asks me why I’m out here this late at night and I wonder if I should answer truthfully, as maybe it’s illegal to cut a tree here. Then again, it’s Christmas. I’d best not lie.

“That was stupid,” she says when I finish.

“Yes. It was.” I don’t tell her about the first part of the stupidity.

“You could have found one back along the highway.”

And once I’m safely driving behind her cruiser, again on my way, I spot it, stop my car, wait until she’s gone, and claim my prize. By three in the morning, it’s standing in my house, and at eight in the morning, before my kids come over, I wake up Amanda to decorate its boughs.

Our Christmas trees have been plastic ever since.

 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/24/what-happened-when-i-decided-to-get-my-tree-from-the-mountains-on-christmas-eve/ 

 

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In ‘A Christmas Pig,’ J.K. Rowling Tucks Morality Into Fantasy

J.K. Rowling’s story of virtues and vices, paired with her knack 

for creating deep fantasy, is a salve to a broken world.

by Chuck Devore for The Federalist

J.K. Rowling is out with a new book aptly named “The Christmas Pig.” With illustrator Jim Field, she creates a new world, as she does so well.

In this world, though, wizards need not apply. Rather, this is the fantasyland of a sad little boy. The boy is sad because his parents divorced. To make a bad situation worse, his bratty older stepsister (likely acting out because her mom got divorced and married the sad boy’s father) threw his favorite stuffed toy, a threadbare old pig, out a moving car window on a snowy day.

With “The Christmas Pig,” Rowling’s knack for creating deep fantasy is a salve to a broken world.

My family first became acquainted with Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series during our eight-hour drives to Sacramento. For six years, I served in the California State Assembly. We started homeschooling our two daughters during my second year in office. The four of us, the dog, and the chinchilla (we still have the chinchilla, a.k.a. Gandalf the Grey — he’s 17), would frequently pile into the SUV and my wife would read Harry Potter until her voice grew hoarse.

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” made it to America in late 1998 with the first film released three years later, two months after Sept. 11, 2001. By then, there was a fair amount of criticism directed at the franchise from some evangelicals who feared it glorified witchcraft. This criticism — ironic, given the direction of attacks leveled on Rowling today — was misguided. Rowling’s tales no more exalted the occult than did J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Ring” series or C.S. Lewis’s “Narnia.”

Editor’s note: Light spoilers ahead.

In “The Christmas Pig,” we follow Jack, a boy who confides in his worn plushy toy pig, called “DP” for “Dur Pig.” “Dur” because when Jack learned to talk, “the” came out as “dur.” It stuck. When Jack’s constant companion lost his eyes, his Mum (British, remember?) who was a nurse, sewed buttons on and then wrapped Mr. Dur Pig in a woolen scarf so little Jack, on his return from the nursery, could take the surgical wrappings off himself.

Soon Jack’s world begins to show hints of coming trauma: he awakes to the sounds of an argument between his mum and dad. Shouting sounding like Dad. A crash. Then a scream, sounding like Mum. More yelling. Jack crept out to the landing and saw his dad stalk out the front door, slam it, and then heard the car drive away. By the time Jack is five, his parents tell him separately that they don’t want to be married anymore.

Some context is in order. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) most recent data on marriage and divorce shows that there were about 2 million marriages and almost 750,000 divorces in the 45 states and D.C. reporting, so, a little more than one divorce for every three marriages. In the UK, about 31 percent of marriages ended in divorce over 15 years of marriage in 1992, dropping to 22 percent by 2017, the most significant drop in divorce in Europe over the period. 

Rowling married a Portuguese television journalist in 1992 after spending 18 months in Portugal teaching English, had a daughter, and separated just over a year later amidst alleged domestic abuse. Taking her daughter, she moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister.

Thus, the opening of “The Christmas Pig” could easily be drawn from first-hand experience. Since my parents divorced when I was three, I too can attest to the unspoken pain of parental separation.

When Jack’s dad suggests it will be fun to fly to see him, Rowling notes, “Jack didn’t think it sounded nearly as much fun as having a dad around to play with, but he didn’t say that. Jack was getting used to not saying things.”

Jack moves, as often happens in the wake of a divorce. In his new school, Jack gets partnered with Holly, an older, much-admired student who helps him improve in reading. But, as fate would have it, Holly too gets shattered by her parents’ divorce. Worse still, Holly’s father ends up dating and marrying Jack’s mother and his relationship with Holly as a trusted classmate immediately turns sour as she turns into a wicked stepsister (no doubt because she too is devastated and acting out as a result).

Things start to go wrong for Jack in his new mixed family. It isn’t long before Holly and Jack have a spat in the back seat of a car. In revenge, Holly throws DP out the car window in a snowstorm. Grandpa tries to find DP but can’t. So an utterly miserable Jack, on Christmas eve, spent his first night in memory without DP.

On Christmas day, a contrite Holly gives Jack a new pig. Grandpa christens him Christmas Pig. Jack would have none of it and stomps on the new toy. After his worst Christmas ever, Jack resolves to wake up when everyone is asleep and go out and find DP himself.

Then, on page 41, commences “The Night For Miracles And Lost Causes.” In the following 230 pages of the fantasy of a child’s dreams, the reader is treated to a powerful allegory where characters in the form of lost toys and discarded items represent the old virtues, vices, and even the deceitful Enemy himself, the Loser.

The Loser lives in a smoking crater, has claw-like hands, searchlight eyes, and “breath that swept over Jack like a hot, foul wind. It smelled as though every rubbish heap in the world was lying in his stomach, of dust, decay, and rotting cloth, of battery acid and burning rubber, of the end of all man-made Things.” You see, the Loser reigns over The Land of the Lost and looks for discarded and lost items to eat as he sucks the soul out of them.

As he travels the Land of the Lost, Jack meets a lost thing called Happiness — lost through carelessness, laziness, and selfishness as its former owner looking for it in all the wrong places. He meets lost Ambition too — who used to belong to a politician who suffered a modest setback. Lost Beauty. Lost Memory (caring for a 97-year-old with dementia for the past 11 years in my house, that one hit home). And even Lost Principles, described as six blue men whose owner, a businessman, lost them one-by-one until he became a crook.

Jack meets Hope, too. Her owner lost Hope in prison. She protested against a ruler and was sentenced to prison for 20 years when the judge was too scared to rule against the president. But Hope knows her owner will find her and she’ll leave the Land of the Lost on a shaft of light as friends and family work hard to free her. Hope observes that her flame doesn’t burn as bright as Happiness, but it’s harder to extinguish.

Jack finally finds his beloved DP, but Dur Pig is so tattered that he can no longer exist in the real world. But Jack now knows that to save his friends, and the other things in the Land of the Lost, he must confront the Loser. Santa shows up to help. And Jack defeats the Loser.

The book closes on Jack waking up under the Christmas tree, clutching the Christmas Pig whom, due to DP’s urging, Jack now treats with the same love as he did old DP.

The Christmas Pig is a morality tale disguised as a children’s fantasy book — and it’s sorely needed for our time.

Article by Scott S. Powell in The American Thinker

The Advent of Christ Changed the World Forever

For Christians, Christmas is a unique time of joy associated with the birth of the savior Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection makes possible a personal and intimate relationship with God. Jesus was born a Jew, and his teachings were built on the foundation of the Torah and the Old Testament.  Thus, Christians and Jews have much in common and share a natural mutual affinity.  But what came from Christ also benefited and deeply affected people of diverse beliefs in every part of the world. 

The fact is that Christ affected history with such impact that He split time in two, dividing all human activities and events into happening before His coming (called B.C.) or after His coming (called A.D.).  No one else in all of human history did this.  Christ had to have had a supernatural impact on the world for that to be accepted.

History shows that Christianity and its Church have brought about more changes for the advancement and benefit of people than any other force or movement in history by an immeasurable factor. What is particularly surprising are the myriad achievements made by committed Christians, which nonbelieving secular-minded people also applaud.  

Before Christ, human life was cheap and expendable all over the world. In the Americas, the Near East, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Babies, particularly females -- who were considered inferior -- were regularly abandoned. Author George Grant points out: “Before the explosive and penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure were a normal part of everyday life.” That changed in the West with the 6th century Christian Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian whose Law Code declared child abandonment and abortion a crime. 

In ancient cultures, women were considered inferior and simply viewed as property of their husbands. More recently, in the last two and a half centuries with the advent of the Christian missionary movement, the lives of women have been greatly improved around the world. Countless female infants abandoned in China were saved from almost sure death by Christian missionaries who then protected, educated, and raised them in Christian orphanages.  

In India, prior to Christian influence, elderly widows were burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres, while infanticide -- particularly for girls -- was practiced by tossing little ones into the sea. In Africa, wives and concubines of tribal chieftains were routinely killed after the latter’s death. These practices were greatly ameliorated or entirely stopped as Christianity began to penetrate and influence the respective cultures. 

Slavery is still practiced in parts of the Middle East and Africa, but it has been abolished throughout the Western world primarily due to leadership and influence of Christians. Two thousand years ago, Apostle Paul was way before his time, stating in his letter to

Philemon, that he should take back his former slave, as “a brother beloved.” 

Critics may accuse America for being too slow to abolish slavery. But it’s also true that slavery existed everywhere in the world at the time America’s Founders -- who were 95% Christian -- wisely drafted the Constitution so as to provide for change. It was that Constitution that enabled the passage of new laws so as to fulfill the ideals in the Declaration of Independence, which affirmed that all people are equal in value and “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

That Constitution assured that the promise of equal opportunity would reach greater fullness with time.  In 50-plus years since Christian reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led the non-violent Civil Rights Movement, blacks have achieved commensurate success with whites in almost every field, including reaching the presidency of the United States.  Today, for the first time in American history, blacks are now represented in the House of Representatives in the same proportion as they are in the population at large.

We all recognize today the important role that charity plays in countless ways to help people in need.  But before Christ, there is no trace or record of any organized charitable effort. The early Christians gained fame and renown by being generous to their own and to nonbelievers as well. Emperor Julian “the Apostate,” the last Roman emperor to try to destroy Christianity, was dumbfounded by the love that Christians showed to pagans and even those who persecuted them. The early church grew in large part by providing a way out of Rome’s harshness, bringing in converts who “turned from Caesar preaching war to Christ preaching peace, from incredible brutality to unprecedented charity.”

Today, widely recognized Christian-based organizations such as the Salvation Army, Samaritans Purse, and Goodwill Industries that started in the U.S. now have operations around the world.  Their programs include shelters for the homeless, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid to developing countries, and also provide employment, training and rehabilitation for people of limited employability.

Of the first 120 colleges and universities founded in America before the Revolutionary War, almost every one of them had Christian origins. In early America -- Harvard, Yale, and Princeton universities were originally founded as seminaries, and seven of the eight Ivy League universities were originally founded for purpose of establishing Christian-based institutions of higher learning.

Healthcare for the poor has its roots in Christianity. In both the early Orthodox Church of the East and the Catholic Church of the West, Christians took to heart the teachings of Christ, who said: “I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me.”  The Syrian Church was the first institution to provide health care service in the East, while the Catholic Church was the first to do so in the West. In 325 A.D. the Council of Nicaea issued an edict requiring every cathedral to have an infirmary or hospital, to take care of people on pilgrimages. In the 9^th century A.D., the Benedictine Monastery in Salerno, Italy, founded the first and most famous medical university in Western Europe. The establishment of hospitals and universities, which accelerated through the Middle Ages was exclusively undertaken by Christians.

An unprecedented outpouring of the visual arts with cathedrals, sculpture, paintings, and frescos being commissioned came about as a result of Christianity flourishing in Europe during the Middle Ages -- the period from the fall of the Roman Empire (476 A.D.) to the beginning of the Renaissance (1350 A.D.).  The Christian Renaissance inspired more of the world’s greatest and most valuable art, by masters the likes of whom have never been seen since -- such as da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Botticelli.  Almost all their created images were taken from or inspired by the Bible.  While it’s impossible to measure, the Christian Renaissance produced more of the world’s greatest and most valuable works of art than any other period, school, epoch, or place in the world by a manyfold factor.

Suffice it to say that life both at home and around the world would no doubt be qualitatively worse today if Christ had never been born and Christianity had not become the greatest spiritual force ever to inspire creative beauty and advance the care and development of people. Indeed, there is reason to sing “Joy to the World.” 

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/the_advent_of_christ_changed_the_world_forever.html

 

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