Have Yourself an Anti-Fascist Christmas

Here in America, the days are rapidly getting shorter, the temperatures are dropping precipitously, and the calendar has been reduced to just a handful of days.It will soon be Christmas here, and frankly, the timing ain’t great.Honestly, many of us here feel ill-prepared or perhaps altogether unfit for the requisite joy of the season.More than any time in recent memory, we sit in the profound tension between the cultural cues and the condition of our hearts, between the impassioned calls for celebration and the heavy grief we carry in the center of our chests, between the annual pressures of merriment and our current capacity to claim it as our own.The lights and tinsel and songs have difficulty coexisting with human rights atrocities, acts of treason, and with leaders whose capacity for the cruel and punitive seems boundless.This Christmas, it’s a Herculean task to let our hearts be light in the shadow of authoritarianism and beneath the gathering cloud of fascism—but we must. Resistance to the darkness has always been the entire point.The elemental heart of the story is one of radiant light streaming into the thick black; an unrelenting love for humanity that would not be overcome, a defiant hope born in the middle of a place starved for it.This is still the invitation for us in these impossibly dark days: bringing the dawn that seems gone for good.In light of this, in keeping with the spirit of the season and the namesake of the holiday, this Christmas we should be fiercely, steadfastly, unrepentantly anti-fascist.With every word we utter, every dollar we spend, every act, however small, we can speak with eloquence.This Christmas, our lives can make the strong, steady, unwavering declaration that wherever we are:The immigrant will be welcomed.The hungry will be fed.The sick will be healed.The vulnerable will be cared for.The outsider will be welcomed in.The weary will be given rest.The mourning will be embraced.This Christmas, wherever we place our feet or show up virtually or open our mouths or open our wallets: Despots will be resisted.Dictators will be defied.Predators will be exposed.Theocracy will be rejected.Diversity will be celebrated.War will be denounced.Hatred will be driven out.Cruelty will be evicted.Love will be the watchword.For two thousand years, this has always been the work of the keepers of Christmas: to be a dissenting opinion to the forecasters of doom, to defend those imperiled by the powerful, to remind humanity that they are not alone, to be the breathtaking plot twist to a story that seemed to be written in stone.The agency in our hands is always greater than we believe it is, and this has never been truer than it is right now. Despite every Constitutional crisis, every existential threat, every heartbreaking bit of bad news besieging us, we still get to be whoever it is we decide we will be.Like an exhausted mother assailed by chaos, saturated with sadness, and surrounded by suffering, we get to carry and deliver something beautiful that will be the difference in the day. There is nothing new under the sun this season.This Christmas, fascism, authoritarianism, and nationalism will find no home here, but hope, compassion, and mercy will.We will make sure of that.Writing is my life’s work. If you find it encouraging or helpful, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. - John This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe