The Most? Wonderful? Time? of the Year

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The holidays are upon us, and with them a dizzying panoply of mixed messages from advertisers, shopping centers, cable news and print media – and, last but not least, the bloated catalogue of Christmas movies that millions of Americans watch year after year. Adding to this year’s holiday cacophony is the punditocracy’s post-election panic about family estrangement over politics and the shaming, implicit and explicit, of those who will not prop up a false family (and by extension national) “unity.” How dare anyone refuse to give toxic relatives a pass, thereby enabling their bad behavior, especially during this “sacred” time of year. There has never been space in America’s Christmas culture for those who, for any reason, feel alienated at this time of year, but in the aftermath of an awful election, the legacy media’s peace-on-earth police are laying it on thick.

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