OUR CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

WHILE many of us enjoy Christmas with family and friends this year, let’s remember that others live in more difficult circumstances, and won’t have any kind of Christmas at all. Given the drastic increase in the cost of living the past few years– rents, food, electricity, gasoline, health care– many are having a hard time not ending up in the streets. Increasingly of course, many Americans– and those in other countries– are on the streets. Not to mention the ever-widening wealth gap, as plutocratic moguls become ever wealthier– potentially to increase even more in 2025, accompanied by a shredded safety net. Not to mention the unspeakable brutalities of our era’s wars, with tech guys at companies like Palantir and Anduril devising ever-more ways to kill and maim people. (Civilized? We call this time we live in civilized?)

AS REMINDER that many poor people are out there, even today, we present this Christmas a classic short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Heavenly Christmas Tree.”

What to make of Dostoevsky? An out-of-date relic from another time period? Or a timeless artistic genius?

Whichever, we invite you to read his story.

He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but someone bent over and embraced him in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and . . . and all at once– oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas!

-Karl and Kathleen