a-christmas-carol – Martin Simpson

I wanted to post one more column before Christmas, both to update everyone on the CO Facebook page and to make a few recommendations.

First, the update.

I spoke with CO last week, and he reminded me that FB suspended the CO site on November 21^st, which means that this past Sunday marked one month since that particular day that will live in infamy. He was hoping that the suspension would be temporary, and if so, that a one-month suspension would be a nice, round number, and that the site might be back up on December 21^st or 22^nd.

Since it is now December 23^rd and the page is not back up, we all know that that didn’t work.

So we’ve now got two options, which I first mentioned a month ago: either re-create a new Facebook site and hope as many followers from the original site manage to find us there, or create a new site somewhere else.

Right now, the “somewhere else” option is looking better, if only because the fecklessness of Facebook doesn’t seem fixable. If we manage to launch another FB site, what’s to say that they won’t shut us down again in another week, or month, or year? They still have not even responded to CO’s many questions.

Questions like, “Why were we suspended?” and “How long will the suspension last?” and “Specifically how can we avoid getting suspended again in the future?” and “What the hell?”

So CO asked me to do two things: 1. Talk to my whiz kid youngest daughter about alternative options for a new site. And 2. Ask those of you who followed us here from the CO FB site if you are someone — or know someone — who could assist us in launching a new site.

What we’re looking for is a kind of quasi-news aggregation site like our original FB page, where CO and a regular cast of characters can link to stories of interest and also put up regular columns, posts, and discussion topics, which all of CO nation can then carry on lively discussions about in the comments.

As opposed to a personal site like my WordPress page that you are now reading – thank you, by the way! – we’re looking to recreate the sense of community that CO inadvertently created on the old FB page, rather than just one person’s site featuring only his own idiosyncratic thoughts, no matter how much of a lovable, hilarious curmudgeon/genius he may be. (I’m just reporting what I’ve heard, people.)

CO mentioned the Instapundit.com page as one model of what he’s thinking of, and we’re also considering a Substack page, too. I’ve asked my daughter to look at those models, and she and I will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of those – and any other options she can think of – right after Christmas.

In the meantime, if any of you have the knowledge to help us set up a site like that, please contact me and let me know that you are willing, and I may reach out to you when we have a plan. When my brother-in-law saw that the page was suspended, he quickly found and bought the rights to CautiousOptimism.org. So we have a domain name. (Someone is apparently squatting on the name “CautiousOptimism.com” and wanted $6800 for it! So that was a hard and quick pass.)

One way or another, our goal is to get a new home for Cautious Optimism up and running in 2026!

Now, on to Christmas.

I hope you all are either planning to hunker down for a quiet and cozy Christmas at home, or else that your travel plans are made and will come off smoothly. We’re staying at home for Christmas, and my two brothers-in-law and their wives are coming to us. Our youngest is home on break after her first semester at Exeter, and our oldest and her husband will be at their home in Denver for the holiday, though they’ll be coming to see us in early January.

As a Christian, this is always a joyous time of year for me, but it’s always tinged with a little melancholy, as I know it is for others.

My dad died 11 Decembers ago, and that’s always in my mind. Regular readers know that my mom’s Alzheimer’s has progressed to the point that we had to put her in a memory care home in August. I was up to see her for an early Christmas last week, and will be up again in a few weeks, and while the disease is robbing her of a little more of herself each week, she still recognizes us, and her default setting of “pretty happy” is still holding. We’ve been able to focus on the moments with her, and she has been content in the present.

Which works out, since all she has now is the present, along with a lot of disjointed memories, which are almost all happy ones. But knowing that last Christmas was the last one she’ll ever spend at home is tougher on us than on her, I think.

I’ve been listening to a mix of old carols, and some newer versions, too. You can’t go wrong with brass quartets or quintets doing the former, and a quirky prodigy named Sufjan Stevens has a lot of eccentric but well-done versions that have become favorites – O Come O Come Emmanuel, Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming, Once in Royal David’s City, etc.

I’ll also watch It’s a Wonderful Life, though I’ve seen it so many times that I’ll probably just fast forward to a few specific scenes. (I can’t get enough Jimmy Stewart, and Donna Reed at the height of her powers approaches the wholesome yet giggity-inducing beauty of my smokeshow wife.)

And it wouldn’t be Christmas for me with at least one or two versions of A Christmas Carol. There’ll always be a place in my heart for the two old classics I saw as a kid – the 1938 version with Reginald Owen as Scrooge, and the 1951 with Alistair Sim. The George C. Scott one is good too, but I grew up with the oldies, and they formed the template for me. But don’t sleep on the 1999 version, in which Patrick Stewart nailed it.

And while I know that everyone has seen the movie versions, if you haven’t ever read the Dickens novel, you owe it to yourself. If you’re going to be traveling and would like the audio version, the late, great Frank Muller did a great reading of it, which you can find anywhere for free.

Finally, this last month without the CO Facebook page has made me more aware than ever of how much that site has meant to me. I’ve made friendships there, and found a rare place where good faith debate and civil behavior still actually exists online. And the chance to write columns has allowed me to mock some idiots, share some thoughts and lower my blood pressure and achieve catharsis on a regular basis.

I can’t thank you all enough for reading and responding, and I am really looking forward to finding a way to launch a new version of Cautious Optimism in the new year!

And I can’t think of a better way to end than with part of the toast that the Charles Dickens character gives at the end of the movie about his writing of A Christmas Carol (called “The Man Who Invented Christmas”):

“I wish you all many, many happy Christmases, and friendships, and great accumulation of cheerful recollections… and heaven at last for all of us!”

Merry Christmas everybody!

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As you read this, my wife and youngest daughter and I will be flying to visit Katie (my oldest daughter) and her husband in Denver. We’ll be returning home on Friday, and I hope to still be able to post a column that morning.

I’m feeling a little of the usual, mild disorientation I feel before traveling, made much stronger now by the insane twists and turns our political world has been making. For one example, a conservative blogger turned me on to a 10-minute rant that Chris Cuomo made last week about Israel and Hamas… and I found myself agreeing with every word he said!

I know: Chris Cuomo! The dullest of the Cuomos! And yet he made perfect sense, pointing out how evil Hamas is, and how leftists who are joining in with the anti-Semitic mobs chanting for genocide are making a huge moral and political mistake.

Then I see a clip of Frankenstein Fetterman, and he’s continuing to make sense too! Now he’s said that even though he is pro-immigration, we still need to stop the unvetted flood of immigrants who are crossing our border daily. He’s also been taking more and more heat – and standing up to it – for continuing to back Israel against Hamas.

The usual fanatical suspects got their burkas over their head about him telling the truth about Hamas and calling them “terrorists.” Over the last month protestors have blocked streets outside his Philly office and heckled him at events. And he responded by saying that he’s not a progressive.

So yeah, I’m a little dizzy. Chris Cuomo is making sense; Fetterman is acting more like a Republican Senator than most Republican senators; the world is upside down, cats and dogs are living together, nothing makes sense anymore!

I’ve done a lot of the usual mockery lately, and the dominant tone of my recent columns has been mostly negative: it seems like the world and our nation are deteriorating before my eyes, and we have one national party that is going farther and farther to the radical and – I don’t know what other word to use – evil left.

And the other party seems like it’s bound and determined to do everything in its power to break my heart, personally.

But it’s Christmas time, so I want to change the focus in this column.

This has always been my favorite time of year, starting when I was a kid. I loved the snow, I loved the carols, I loved the Christmas plays at church. Oddly enough, though I’ve always been a wise guy, I was never a Wise Man.

Speaking of which, I just remembered a dumb joke about kids portraying the Three Wise Men at church. The three kids approach the manger, and one of them holds up a small box and says, “I have gold.” And he puts it down. The second kid says, “I have myrrh,” and puts it down. And the third kid steps up and holds out his box and says, “Frank sent this.”

Anyway, in my own experience, being young and blessed to be growing up in a loving and stable family, in the mostly functional and cohesive Midwest, Christmas was unadulterated bliss.

But as I’ve reached my sixth decade, it’s pretty easy to understand why this holiday can be a depressing time for many people. Mixed in with the good things, we can easily succumb to bittersweet nostalgia for lost loved ones, lost youth, and happier times that appear even more glowing because of their distance from the gritty present.

And when tragedy happens near Christmas – as it inevitably does over a long enough time span, considering that the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season is about 1/8th of the year – the losses bite deeper when the season reminds us.

My dad died 9 years ago last Thursday, and Alzheimers has taken more of mom from herself and from us over the past year. A loved one died in the prime of her life last Monday from an unexpected autoimmune disease and pneumonia, leaving three kids and a devastated extended family.

Life continually reminds us that it isn’t fair, and that we’re not guaranteed anything on this earth.

Still, this site is about cautious optimism, and I don’t know if I’m getting wiser, or just older. But my increasing sense of the brevity and fragility of life really is making me value and appreciate each day more and more. (You may remember my column last month, in which I quoted the end of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73: “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong/To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”)(That guy knew some stuff.)

And if that’s the case for every regular old day, for me it’s even more true of Christmas and the Christmas season. So I thought I’d conclude this column by recommending a few of my favorite Christmas books and music, and ask you to share some of yours.

I’ve written before of how much I love Dicken’s great “A Christmas Carol.” Even though we all get sick of songs, movies and people who get over-exposed – and no cultural production has been experienced more often than A Christmas Carol! – the tale has never gotten old for me.

I still enjoy watching it on tv, and my favorite version has fluctuated between the 1938 version with Reginald Owen and the 1951 with Alistair Sim, but in recent years the 1999 version with Patrick Stuart has elbowed its way into a near, three-way tie.

I re-read at least most of the book every year, but in recent times I’ve taken to listening to it as a book on cd (or streaming), as read by the late, great Frank Muller. You can easily find that recording, and if you’re traveling for the holidays, listening to the combination of Muller’s voice and Dickens’ masterful writing should put you in the spirit of the season.

This year conservative Hillsdale College – a great contrast and counterpoint to the kind of woke malice on display in the Ivy League and in way too many other universities – has put out a six-episode course on the Carol.

The videos are well done; their total run time is around 3 hours, and you watch them for free by registering on the Hillsdale site. An English prof named Dwight Lindley walks you through the text, mostly celebrating but also explaining and interpreting, and it’s worth your time.

When it comes to Christmas music, it goes without saying that when the great and powerful CO performed his own version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” on guitar last Christmas at my request, I had reached the pinnacle of coolness. (Perhaps he can re-post that before Christmas, for those who have found the CO site over the last year?)

I’ve always thought that you can’t go wrong with Christmas carols played by brass quartets. I’ve also written in the past about the quirky but effective takes on many carols from Sufjan Stevens, which are worth checking out on line.

The Christmas song that I listen to the most in recent years is “O Come, O come, Emmanuel,” probably because its combination of hope and mourning speaks to the bittersweetness that I discussed above.

My favorite version lately is the OG country/bluegrass one by the Petersons, a family with three sisters with great voices. They do a 5-minute melding of “O Come, O Come” and “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” that is all kinds of right. The instrumentation comes from a banjo, violin, mandolin, cello, guitar and dobro, and while I appreciate a symphony, my hillbilly heart loves those six instruments together.

Finally – and this one might be a bridge too far for those of you who are not religiously inclined – I recently discovered Chosen, the video series on the life of Christ. In general, I’m a little put-off by most video versions of the Bible or Bible stories, but this series is really well done, and captures what seems to me to be the essence of the Man and His story.

If you’re inclined to give it a try, I’d suggest one particular scene to give you a taste of the series: the story of Christ meeting the woman at the well. The scene is only around 7 minutes long, but it captures the essence for me. And even if you’re not a believer, if that scene doesn’t choke you up at least a little, I don’t know what’s going on with you.

Okay, CO nation. I’m off for some family time in Denver. If you’ve got particular Christmas traditions, music or anything else that makes the season for you, please share them.

But as the holiday approaches, we must still not forget…

Hamas delenda est!