Al’s Christmas Tea: Awaiting the Wonderful Counselor … Advent is Underway
Welcome in for our first serving of Al’s Christmas Tea, where we turn our attention to the “reason for the season,” along with other Christmas-related matters.
Mother Nature has already put much of the nation in the mood with snow and freezing temperatures. And since it’s now December, we can blast the Christmas music without somebody complaining, “You can’t play Christmas music before Thanksgiving!” As if Andy Williams isn’t welcome anytime.
We actually have a bit of interesting news from the Christmas music world coming up. But first, Advent is underway.
“Come Jesus!” Advent has Begun
Sunday marked the start of Advent, our time to prepare for the coming of the Christ Child and His inevitable return.
We await the one the Prophet Isaiah spoke about: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
We don’t just wait, though As Pope Benedict XVI said, we also awaken: “It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”
May memories of goodness flood any frustrations of the season. May present harms and past hurts give way to hope.
May we never lose sight of the fact that the greatest gift came wrapped not in a bow, but in swaddling clothes.
Martha Makes a Boo-Boo
The holidays bring all manner of frustrations and pressures. “I’m not going to find the right gift.” “I will never have this house ready for the party.” “What if I say the wrong thing at my wife’s office party?” “What if the turkey is dry?”
To those who have thoughts like these, we say simply, “Even Martha Stewart screws up sometimes.”
The queen of the kitchen, the high priestess of hosting, Martha Stewart admitted the other day that she committed a major rookie error when preparing dozens of pies for Thanksgiving. She forgot to put pans underneath the pies she was baking, and when they bubbled over, they made a mess of her ovens.
“I used three big ovens which are a mess now because I stupidly forgot to place cookie sheets under some of the pies which bubbled and oozed everywhere,” she wrote. But “the pies are delicious!”
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Holiday Shopping Season
The official Christmas shopping season kicked off with Black Friday. The National Retail Foundation is projecting record-breaking spending this year, with Americans shelling out between $979.5 billion and $989 billion across November and December. That’s up 3% from last year’s $955.6 billion.
This may come as a surprise, but although Adobe reports online sales are expected to rise 8.6% this year to $240.8 billion, most holiday shopping is still done in stores.
Another interesting tidbit: It appears that red states are more enthusiastic about holiday spending this year than blue ones. CNBC reports that post-election shipping volumes shot up by an average of 50.4% in states that voted for Trump. In blue states, shipping volumes fell by an average of 11.2%. Of those, only Illinois saw shipping volumes rise.
CNBC’s survey of voters backed up the shipping numbers. The business network found Trump voters feeling much more positive about the future of the economy than those who voted for Kamala Harris.
A Cultural Shift: Apple Ad Touches Heart
Jaguar recently jumped the shark with a commercial that was not only woke, bizarre, and off-brand, but missed the changing mood of the times.
Apple, on the other hand, has nailed it with a new Christmas-themed ad that is a moving celebration of fatherhood and family. The spot for AirPods Pro 2 shows a hearing-impaired father reflecting on his daughter as she opens the gift of a new guitar for Christmas.
According to Benny Johnson, “The pro-family cultural revolution is here.”
I’m stunned. Apple just released the single greatest pro-parenting ad in the history of American advertising.
The pro-family cultural revolution is here.
Watch. Try not to cry… pic.twitter.com/30JvZkuMjJ
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 28, 2024
“Home for Christmas” from Cheyenne Grace
Here’s another sign that the culture is regaining its sanity. A couple of years ago, a famous conservative’s child’s project would have been shredded simply for its connection to the conservative. But here we are and the hottest Christmas album in the country currently belongs to Cheyenne Grace, daughter of Blaze founder Glenn Beck.
Home for Christmas, released on Friday, was the #4 album on all of iTunes Sunday, and the nation’s #1 Christmas Album — and papa couldn’t be prouder.
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1862631469757214956
Here’s a bit of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” to send you into the evening.
On the Stream Menu…
Jules Gomes tells us why “Catholic Scholars Caution Faithful to Beware of Scientific Proof for Eucharistic Miracles.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Jay Battacharya — President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the National Institutes of Health during his second term — appeared at James Madison University earlier this year to discuss how our personal freedoms are intertwined with public health. Check out “The End of Free Speech is the End of Science.”
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.