Dear patient readers,
While many of you are not Christmas-celebrators (or may observe the Christian Orthodox calendar), it is such a widely observed date that commerce and news hopefully slow down for most, allowing for festivities or at least some R&R. So I hope you are able to enjoy this holiday season in whatever way suits you best.
I also want to extend some camaraderie to what I call Christmas orphans, those who might have regularly observed a traditional festive season but are going to be alone this year, perhaps due to health or budget impediments, or family ruptures, or the death of a close relative. It is isolating to go through a difficult time and even more so when our commercialized Western society bombards consumers with images of happy-looking gatherings, piles of presents, and tables groaning with Christmas grub. Admittedly, Christmas also has genuinely uplifting features. I have to admit a fondness for decked-out Christmas trees and the cheery extra lighting and decorations that adorn many homes and businesses. It’s a welcome counter to the (for those in the northern Hemisphere) short winter days.
And Christmas music, particularly choral music, is stirring. Earlier today, I attended an a cappella performance at one of the expats’ clubs here, by blind children who did a wonderful job (imagine not just staying on pitch but not having a conductor to keep everyone tightly on tempo). I did get a chill up my spine from some of their songs.
Due to a dearth of proper socialization, I don’t have warm or sentimental feelings about major holidays and thus don’t mind being monastic at those times, even though confessing to that further marks me as an oddball. But for those who are alone or less able to get out and about than they would like, it’s important to engage in proper self care and not let deviating from norms gnaw at you. As indicated, I recommend music, particularly a live performance if you are able to get out and have something suitable nearby. If you are feeling rebellious about Christmas conventions, medieval songs might be an alternative:
Established readers may recall that I have a weakness for Dimash:
Lambert was particularly taken with this song:
And as a long ago choral singer, even though Messiah is not technically Christmas music, I love a big wall of sound. While you don’t have the fun of watching the performance with this recording, it got top marks from music buffs, and I found it more tingle-inducing than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir versions. The Hallelujah chorus starts at 139:30.
I saw this snippet in my childhood when it first ran and am still fond of it:
Now to our schedule. Your team of writers is so dedicated that they intend to keep up all the Coffee Breaks over the holidaze, but forgiven them if any have their regular lives intercede, in addition to a “weekend” schedule (Links plus two other posts) starting Christmas through and including New Year’s Day.
We also have a comments holiday of sorts. As opposed to turning them off, which we have during some holiday breaks, they will be on but liberation of comments that get snagged will be more leisurely than usual. I will be on but I can over only very late evening Eastern through noon or a bit later. Katiebird will be off and semperloquitur will be checking in in the afternoons, save Christmas Day. So please be patient during afternoon and evening times!
And again, have a wonderful holiday! And for those who pray, please include “Peace on earth” in your invocation.
Thanks for all the hard work – I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season, of whatever variety you enjoy.
And thanks so much for those musical clips, good music is always a wonderful comfort.
I sum up in both the thanks and the wishes. I hope to pass a nice holiday with my wife, son and daughter. We meet all in Christmas time and this is for me the main celebration. This evening I will happily work for a special dinner. I haven’t bothered to enter Madrid city centre this year and have been able to miss in full the bloody commercial part of Christmas. Whether you are passing the holidays alone, with your family, or enjoy more or less massive gatherings, keep the good karma and enjoy.
The Handel Piece, I have enjoyed it! Beautiful surprise.
Perfect resources as I was planning to hibernate and turn on Christmas music all day, many thanks.
If you are drawn to a cappella performance, check out the awe-inspiring Chanticleer (https://www.chanticleer.org/)
Merry Christmas to everyone at NC. I am deeply grateful for the work of everyone here at this island of sanity in an insane world.
The musical clips are great!
“Due to a dearth of proper socialization, I don’t have warm or sentimental feelings about major holidays and thus don’t mind being monastic at those times, even though confessing to that further marks me as an oddball.”
For me YS it was the food …
Per se Billy berry’s – cranberries soaked for a week, at least, in bourbon or home made sourdough pancakes mixed the night before with cheese cloth over the bowl for a night. Only extenuated by the views of Oak Creek in Sedona AZ. I mean on the creek w/ picture windows over it on the side of the house, oops and a oak tree growing a branch inside over the dining table.
For myself I am doing a medium size turkey on the Weber BBQ slathered in butter the French way w/ cheery wood smoke and my mad potato salad. Hope everyone eats really nice food …. made with care …
Hell yeah bro
Dry Turkey is a mortal sin … mate …
No brine or other silly stuff. Just lots and lots of good salted butter rubbed in, bit of thyme, some Lanes BBQ sweet lemon pepper, cooked in charcoal Weber with coal off set to back, 145/160 C temp, w/a few small chunks of Pecan wood, turn after 30 min till internal temp is 74C, min, pull and rest with tea towel – mind blowing …
Crispy skin, moist tender meat, even legs, so simple.
JUST FINISHED WATCHING NATIONAL LAMPOONS XMAS VACATION AND THE ILLEGALS ARE SHOOTING OFF FIREWORKS OUTSIDE AND I JUST BLAZED A JOINT!
MURICA
🇺🇸 🎄
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!
> I also want to extend some camaraderie to what I call Christmas orphans
Our commentariat occasionally brings their sorrows to this table, losses mortal and otherwise. Lives not yet reduced to anecdota, I am usually unable to respond, being poorly socialized and overwhelmed by emotion. More than once, a serious blow is shortly followed by more normal comments, and I’ll lay this to a sanctuary effect. Not always comfortable, but there is a safe haven here, for honest conversation. And that is good.
As a recipient of that sanctuary effect on multiple occasions, it is indeed good.
I’d like to do a shout out to the music of John Rutter, who’s 80 this year. Always enjoyed performing his work. For someone who’s not particularly religious, he wrote a lot of popular Christmas music.
Thank you NC – happy holidays
Peace and joy of this season to all.
I spend the major holidays in splendid isolation. But I do have abundant consolation. My son, his wife, and their two toddlers live with me so I see them every day. They visit my ex, who lives a few hours away by car on the holidays. Because I too enjoy the benefits of a “dearth of proper socialization”, I am glad to avoid the frenetic, frantic, often emotionally fraught, and forced joy making of the season. In years past, to please my then spouse, who was a kind of Christmas berserker, I got quite caught up in all of that, and am now much relieved to be shut of it.
Alas, my son is not. Among his other holiday obligations, he agreed, in what must have been a moment of holiday induced madness, to play a major role in preparing two major holiday dinners, one for his in-laws today, and another tomorrow for a gathering at his mother’s. He is after all his mother’s son. But yesterday, looking quite frazzled, he told me that next Christmas we should go stay in an isolated mountain cabin and get away from “all this horse shit.” He is after all his father’s son.
Best wishes to all. I come to the Naked Capitalism site for the excellent writing, the essay format of the posts, and the discussions in the comments section among us groundlings. Luckily, here in Italy, and even in the Italian Parliament, there is a significant group of skeptics — journalists, writers, and even politicians who have come to similar conclusions. So there is a wider community.
I just took a cranberry-walnut cake out of the oven. I will bring it to tonight’s dinner — all those delightful fish courses — as an exotic U.S. dessert.
I also agree with Yves Smith. Go to concerts. Live theater works, too. I have been to some excellent concerts this December, which have included a surprising work from Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky’s overwhelming Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, and one of Ravel’s chamber pieces (Bolero is the least of the remarkable Ravel).
As to observance / non-observance, I was at a concert here in Torino in a highly atmospheric church, where a woman sang this work by Monteverdi. Beauty is beauty is beauty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c3xIzMk-8k
Peace on earth.
I very much enjoyed my two years in Sydney, both the city and the Australians. And one of the very nice things then, which I hope is still true, is how much really good theater there was, often in small venues, with very affordable tickets. There was a stage just a 5 minute walk from me, in Potts Point, about 30 seats, with all the shows I saw at least pretty good. And it was wonderful being so close to the actors. By contrast, a lot of theater in the States is too pricey and too often precious.
Yves Smith. Exactly.
Just before Thanksgiving, I attended a performance of Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar, translated and adapted by a highly talented theater troupe called Fertili Terreni Teatro). The company used San Pietro in Vincoli, a former camposanto with a chapel, all enclosed in a colonnade — and somewhat spooky. For the funeral orations, the players led the audience from the former chapel to the center of the camposanto, where we listened to the orations by Brutus and Mark Antony.
Excellent theater. The theatrical season and musical season here are lively, of high quality, with many offerings. The equal of all U.S. cities except NYC.
And U.S. ticket prices are indeed a big problem. Ticket for Giulio Cesare? Thirteen euro. For the concert of the RAI Orchestra of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky? Twenty euro.
You rang – https://cityhub.com.au/the-2025-wrap-up-5-of-the-best-sydney-theatre-shows-of-the-year/
Off beat Oz thingy and depth of talent is not dead yet … even if mainstream would like it to be so …
Would you be willing to post the cake recipe? It sounds good.
Thanks
Happy Holidays, all! For all of you, the coolest version of “The Night Before Christmas” ever.
Huey “Piano” Smith
🫡 🎄 🇺🇸
✌️ 🌎
Merry Xmas to everybody at NC! For our winter musical interlude, my better half and I will be seeing Gustav Holst’s The Planets performed by our local symphony orchestra. I’m very excited to hear it live since the dynamics on the recording I have aren’t the greatest – if you turn up the volume enough to hear the Venus part, you get blown out of the room when Jupiter starts up.
To celebrate Festivus for the rest of here, I will once again leave you with my favorite Xmas song (w/ hat tip to Harry Shearer – Christmas with the Devil from Spinal Tap!
Tnanks to Yves for all your hard work. And the music! I find I can’t watch movies and series since my partner passed…but music! I’m so fortunate to have found you all in the long ago.
Happy holidays to all from our dacha in the Moscow countryside. And for the Europeans in our commentariat, a holiday jingle from Russia:
https://video.corriere.it/esteri/russia-lo-spot-che-prende-in-giro-gli-europei-bollette-troppo-alte-e-tutta-colpa-di-putin/ddee8e36-578c-4a7f-bb4f-69b7c0c06xlk
Thanks to NC.
All I want for Christmas is a referral approval from the insurance company. I need it by Tuesday. The deductible starts over on Jan 1 and it doubled from last year. The doctor was kind enough to book the last appointment of the year in the hopes the approval comes through.
Please, Santa. Pretty please.
ZOMG, I wish you luck.
Merry Christmas to one and all, especially to Yves and the crew at NC. Just gone into Christmas day here and the wife is putting on a dinner for friends and family. If it wasn’t summer here I would be wearing track pants that can expand easily. As a treat, I wish to point to Italy who knows something about style and Christmas. Enjoy-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1pu2hh5/italy_has_the_worlds_largest_christmas_tree/
Merry Xmas, Yves, writers, and commentariat. And a happy and more peaceful new year!
From the archives: 1974 Christmas shopping muzak. I always recommend this Kmart Christmas to remind people of exactly what the holiday is all about (hint – temporarily shut down your neuronal synapses).
https://archive.org/details/KmartDecember1974ReelToReel
@13:24 “will security please report to section 3, security to section 3, please” was put in by Kmart HQ, just to keep you on your toes, folks. The five-fingered discount is not in the spirit of the season. Unless ya have to.
I love you guys, and happy holidays. I acquired an expensive bird to stuff with other birds’ distended livers, as is our custom here in France.
Merry Christmas and happy new year to all the NC crew and community! What a special place this is, with a most special gathering of people! ❤️💖🎄🕯️🪵🎇
Back in the days when you could go to about any store and buy recorded music, the Christmas Album was pretty much unavoidable. A wide range of music in various sub-genres. Today with streaming I don’t know that we see the same thing? I don’t subscribe to any service but do sometimes turn on the Christmas playlists from Pandora. It doesn’t seem like much new material out there. Lots of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” covers. Maybe an exception is k-pop. There seems to be a tradition of turning out seasonal recordings by groups or sometimes their managing companies. The songs tend not to be exactly what we in the US consider typical, but they do generally fit the upbeat mood so add to the ambiance.
Meanwhile, here in Hawaii we get a few new renditions of “Mele Kalikimaka” (Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright…”)
A classic version by Alfred Apaka who was long time in residence at Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki: Mele Kalikimaka
Thank you, Yves, and season’s greetings to all. I’m spending the day with my dogs, hoping the power stays on, and listening to all my favorite recordings, including, of course, A Child’s Christmas in Wales –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFSs2IdDmuU
And, perhaps not to everyone’s taste, Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7KLGMM2YR8&list=PLKtm2G15Yd1CRzCHcZDdqbM-w4If6_8Qb
I remember Lambert’s posting the Cambridge version of “Once in Royal David’s City” some Christmas past, and like then, I enjoyed it tremendously.
Participating in glee clubs and choruses is something I remember fondly, and I recommend it, even if you’re older. In high school, we had the privilege of performing our Christmas program at the grand hall of the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery in Kansas City, a very large and very live Beaux Arts room filled with Rodins and knights’ armor, now sadly converted to an “events venue” filled with tables for the rich. Processions, less grand than the one in the video, were a big part of it. By senior year, I came in the first time carrying a kindergartner on my shoulders, a practice that could get a little damp around the neck. Then it was time to enter as a Glee Clubber, then a Singer, and finally as a madrigal, a dozen guys and girls sauntering in singing “Lo, How a Rose.”
As a seminary student clinging to my 30s, I went on tour with our seminary chorus in St. Louis to DC and back. In a way very similar to the video, we began singing in the narthex, out of sight, then entered with candles into a nave in low light. Once we were all in, the light came up, and the congregation joined us as in the video. That’s always a very stirring moment for me, one of human solidarity, especially with well-known Christmas hymns that everybody sings.
Weird aside, this chorus of Lutheran guys in clericals was the favorite of Assembly of God (charismatic) preacher John Ashcroft. We sang at his prayer breakfast when he was governor and then, because of Ashcroft’s request, at a St. Louis conference of “evangelicals” that included everybody from the pentecostalists to the Salvation Army. I think our official Synodical stance that we couldn’t pray with any of those people because they were all unorthodox. Strange, strange, strange.
With most directors, rehearsals are fun as well, whether it’s a church or community choir. Singing really does have the capacity to bring people together, lighten the heart and stir the soul. So tune up in the shower and make a New Year’s resolution to sing somewhere.
When my father was a boy soprano, he would be chosen to sing the solo in “Once in Royal David’s City” during the annual festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. He always had perfect pitch, according to my grandmother. As an adult tenor, he continued to sing in the church choir every Sunday.
I am not religious but I do enjoy the traditional carols at Christmas. The King’s College Choir performing Nine Lessons and Carols is my favorite. I recommend it even to those who don’t enjoy “Christmas music”.
Thanks to you all at NC for everything you do.
What a wonderful reflection on the holiday. You mentioned “self care”, a wonderful thought. That will be my intention for the New Year. Not an it’s all about me thing, but rather a kindness and consideration toward myself so that I may better do the same to others. Thanks so much for so many years of wonderful posts.
Merry Christmas and pleasant Holidays to all.
Great quote, sums up my experience with the holidays, and the motivation for my celebration of the Yule Solstice since the mid 1970s. After years of doing “proper” socialization, I now have given myself permission to live as I like.
Best to all, with thanks and gratitude for all the NC crew!
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all the writers and the commentariat here!
To all a good night🎶 Yes, a musical, yearly. I make it until intermission then scoot out. Safety first… the long drive back to the North 40 and such. Orphans Unite; joining my flock at the barn, filling the feeders, checking the water. Senior nibbles, senior naps. A long soak at the Japanese salt baths and quiet solitude. May a little light shine as we reach into the fourth turning, new year and all that jazz. Thanks all, for keeping me up night after night, reading the “good word”. Be well, good peoples🌅
Yves, you are brilliant, music, especially the choral voice, is mesmerizing to most. A language that has meaning to all willing to listen; especially live!
Merry Christmas to you and all the wonderful people who make NC such a marvelous meeting place.
Gawd, let there be Peace on Earth.
Merry Christmas! Thank you to the team for all the hard work in 2025.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Thank you NC crew and commenters!
And for those of us of a certain age and location:
Charlie Brown Christmas – Vince Guaraldi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZtrgRejwG0
Best holiday wishes to all, and especially to Yves, whose tireless efforts make this site a beacon of truth and sanity in a turbulent time. May the new year bring health and happiness to all in the NC community!