Newsletter: The hope and defiance of celebrating Christmas in a time of darkness

Good morning. It is Saturday, Dec. 28. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

There’s a point every Christmas (usually when I find myself in a long line of cars inching through a mall parking lot) where I ask, “Why do we do this to ourselves every year?” The overspending, the wastefulness of celebratory consumption — none of it sits well with me.

Still, I spend more time than usual during the holidays in introspective contemplation. Something about nurturing the light at a time of increasing darkness (both in the seasonal literal sense and, well, politically) moves me. Perhaps it comes from the Norwegian tradition of St. Lucia’s night, celebrated Dec. 13, where white candles are lighted in windows and churches everywhere and songs are sung, a humble act of defiance against the lengthening winter night and hope for brighter days ahead.

It was with this mindset that I read two Christmas-themed Opinion pieces that might at first seem at odds with each other, but felt as perfect complements for the holiday season. The first was a meditation on suspending disbelief by my colleague Carla Hall, who urged readers to resist the “temptation to pick apart magical beliefs, a tendency that sets in at some point in childhood — or perhaps that marks the end of childhood.” She urged a different approach this time of year: “Instead of letting our dreary realism call into question the Santas and the elves, we could hold on to our holiday imaginings and lean into that other very human impulse: the will to believe, against all odds, in better times and a better world year-round.”

That sort of defiance marking the embrace of Christmas echoed in op-ed contributor Bonnie Kristian’s piece, “Why Christmas isn’t for kids.” Kristian says the focus on the cute, cuddly aspect of the holidays “lulls us into forgetting that Christmas, fundamentally, is a celebration of God looking at a broken and self-betrayed world and refusing to abandon us to death and desolation.”

Kristian is, well, a Christian; I am not. Still, I find in her piece an ecumenical call to do something — to make the world a better place, to end war and bring peace — that she understands as inspired by God. As a lapsed Lutheran who grew up going to Advent services that emphasized the season’s calling to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger (contrary to the rejection Joseph and Mary received looking for room at the inn in Bethlehem), I find Kristian’s invocation appealing across religious lines.

Even to a nonbeliever, the message of defiant hope and togetherness of the holidays — of not letting the light go out, even as darkness advances — resonates strongly. With that in mind, I sincerely wish you a (belated) merry Christmas and happy new year. Thank you for reading in 2024; let’s hope for and work toward brighter days in 2025.

California ruled with great jobs and boom times. What happened? California is great if you’re a tech bro, and it’s true that our economy trumps all others on size alone, writes Joel Kotkin. But for just about everyone else and on most measures, the Golden State has lost its luster: “California has been a particularly poor bet for blue-collar professions, such as manufacturing, the traditional path to upward mobility for minorities and non-college educated people.”

How press freedoms could fare under the second Trump administration. Gabe Rottman warns that if the first Trump term is any indication, the federal government’s pursuit of journalists’ sources — and journalists themselves — over leaked information could accelerate: “President-elect Trump has often decried national security leaks and called for aggressively investigating and prosecuting them. It would be foolish for press advocates to discount the possibility of a repeat of his first term, and perhaps an escalation.”

Romney’s Senate exit marks an end to the bipartisanship Washington desperately needs. Lanhee J. Chen, who ran for California controller in 2022 and was Mitt Romney’s policy director in his 2012 presidential campaign, worries that the spirit of dealmaking and bipartisanship that his former boss brought to government service will leave with him when he leaves the U.S. Senate next month.

Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? The president-elect’s housing views are a puzzle. Former Ventura Mayor William Fulton says it’s hard to figure out the president-elect’s opinions on housing policy: “As a former real estate developer — and an advocate of deregulation in general — Trump ought to be a YIMBY, the yes-in-my-backyard, pro-housing opposite of a NIMBY. In fact, in an interview last summer with Bloomberg, he railed against zoning, calling it a ‘killer’ and promising to bring housing costs down. Except, apparently, when doing so threatens suburban neighborhoods with single-family zoning, the most sweeping restraint on development in California and beyond.”

More from opinion

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• Jonah Goldberg: This is the trouble with Elon Musk’s debut as a federal budget negotiator
• Jackie Calmes: Drain the swamp? More like overt, unapologetic swampy displays at Mar-a-Lago

From guest contributors

• The Christmas Eve tradition that keeps me connected to my mother
• How our words about the Israel-Hamas war can add to hostilities — or help on a path to peace
• A lesson in how to teach your kids to speak Russian

From the editorial board

• Immigrants are California’s lifeblood. They need support now more than ever

Letters to the editor

• The leader of the Democratic Party? Not Kamala Harris
• Elon Musk’s influence shows why we need campaign spending reform
• I’m a former LAUSD principal. It’s about time they unionized