Image 01 Image 03

Christmas Tag

On Christmas Eve 1944, U.S. troops were in the freezing cold of the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge, waist-high in snow. We have remembered and told that story on recent Christmas Eves: I encourage you not only to read the posts and the comments, but also the comments to our prior Facebook threads [here and here] and our current Facebook thread [here] in which people recounted their family experiences.

Legal Insurrection has posted some awesome Christmas videos over the years, and this is a great time to revisit them . . . and add a few. Music is such an integral part of the human experience, and our memories are so often connected directly to a particular tune or lyric.  A song can whisk us back in time, warm our heart, and boost our spirits.  Christmas songs, it seems to me, are among the more powerful examples of this phenomenon.

The Palestinian leadership has responded furiously to President Trump’s December 6th official recognition of the obvious reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Over the past several weeks, there’ve been heated denunciations, some of which trafficked in ugly antisemitic tropes and canards; the usual Hamas-incited “days of rage”; calls for demonstrations by the Palestinian Authority (which canceled school, so young people could participate in the clashes and rioting); and over a dozen rockets shot from Gaza into Israel.

With a newborn and a seven-year-old, quiet is a rarity. But everyone is sleeping soundly after our first Christmas as one, big family. This year has been one of the best, if not THE best year of my life. Getting married, gaining a step-daughter, growing a tiny human -- it's all more than I ever imagined. Regular readers know that I've frequently joked (sort of) about what an awful year 2016 has been. An almost uncanny number of well-known, talented people have passed on this year, our entire political world was tased by the silent majority's Death Star, and to top if off, the year is ending with a nation-wide whipped cream shortage.

Once President-elect Trump vowed to end the war on Christmas and stated that we're going to say "Merry Christmas" again, a nationwide silent cheer went up as Americans across the country felt the weight of the religious suppression that permeates and fuels political correctness lifted in a very real way. Americans who felt, almost physically felt, that iron wall lift are mostly Christians and people who identify as Republicans or conservatives.

We featured this video last year and liked it so much, we’re doing it again. Christmas flash mobs have become very popular over the last few years but so far none have matched the outstanding effort put forth by the Opera Company of Philadelphia in 2010. The Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah is a staple of Christmas music for good reason but when singers from multiple groups joined to create this moment on video, history was made.

I want to wish Legal Insurrection readers a very Merry Christmas (as well as Happy Chanukah, which begins December 24). My family decided to begin this holiday season with a trip to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley. Given how closely my family followed this year's election, it seemed a grand way to conclude a crazy political year.

The posts I most enjoy writing about are the ones I didn't plan, but somehow found. I've written about Christmas Eve in World War II before, including in 2014, Christmas 1944: The Battle of the Bulge. and a follow up with reader memories in 2015, Christmas Eve in the Ardennes 1944. In searching for another story to tell this Christmas Eve, I stumbled upon memories of Christmas Eve 1943 at Stalag Luft 1, a POW camp for captured Allied airmen.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has already started to track Santa Claus as he travels the world tonight to bring presents to kids around the world. It has become a tradition for 61 years, which has evolved with technology, allowing parents to show children the exact location of Saint Nick. How did this happen? Well, it all began back in 1955....