Bad Santa

      For the last three years of my life, I haven't celebrated Christmas. That's my new normal.

      Since Barbara died in September 2023, there has been no one to shop for, no one to cook for. This is my second Christmas here in Arizona and, hopefully, my last. Today and last year, I'd opened up my laptop, see how others celebrate Christmas, the way I used to. Then I work on one book or another. Then I go to bed at night.

     That's it. That's my new normal.

     Yet, I realize that billions all over the world still celebrate Christmas in more joyous and traditional ways, the ways I used to observe it: Making children and other loved ones happy. Visiting family bearing gifts. Wrapping presents and stuffing stockings, trimming the tree, preparing for holiday meals, going out of their way to make people, even random strangers, happy.

     But there are some among us who just don't get it, never have and never will.

     That includes virtually everyone who works in this kakistocracy of a government who still insist on putting someone who is at the very least a suspected pedophile on the phone with children on Christmas Eve. And, with Trump's dementia reaching epic proportions, that never ever promises a good outcome. To cite just two examples from last night:

     One little girl made the mistake of calling Mar a Lago. This was the exchange:

     "What would you like Santa to bring?"

     "Uh... not coal?"

     "Not coal, you don't want coal. Well coal is — you mean clean, beautiful coal. I had to do that, I'm sorry. Coal is clean and beautiful, just remember that. But you don't want clean, beautiful coal, right?"

     Even talking to a little kid on Christmas Eve, Trump couldn't resist spouting hoary right wing talking points about the superiority of coal, one of the planet's most pernicious pollution agents.

     Another time, as Trump and Melania practically sat on opposite sides of the Florida peninsula, Trump spoke to another child.

     "We track Santa. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. We want to make sure that he's not infiltrated, that we're not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa. Santa loves Oklahoma like I do. You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election."

     Moments earlier, he said,

     "You sound so beautiful and cute. How old are you?"

     "I am eight."

     Meanwhile, I could imagine Melania muttering into the phone, "Who gives fuck about Christmas? I only do this until I renegotiate prenup."

      Meanwhile, Stephen Miller was giving the gift of Christmas Eve deportations:

 

     Then, of course, Trump did as he does every Christmas day and wrote, ""Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly..."

     

     And then there was this video released by the sons of Josef Goebbels at DHS, one that looks like something out of the opening credits of the The Americans.

Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior. pic.twitter.com/SDYujiojXS

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) December 24, 2025

      People, we cannot allow this to become the new normal because these moral palsies simply have no concept of the true meaning of Christmas or any other holiday. We cannot lose our capacity for outrage and we need to call out these psychopaths at every available opportunity.