Merry Generic National Holiday Season!


Season’s Greetings All! (By which, of course, you should understand me to mean only “Happy Winter.”)

First off, I’d like to apologize to all of you for the past three weeks’ silence here in Limbo. It’s the end of the academic semester in Korea, and this semester has been overloaded with even more than the usual allotment of tasks, responsibilities, commitments, and also unexpected opportunities. As a result, these final days of tying everything up have been all-consuming. To demonstrate what I mean, it’s Christmas morning in Korea as I write this, and yet where am I as I write? Sitting next to a sparkling Christmas tree listening to Christmas motets performed by the Tallis Scholars, Handel’s Messiah, or Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack? No, I’m in my office here at 7:20 a.m. — exactly where I’ve been all night, grading exams about The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved teaching Dorian Gray, which seems almost the perfect book for today’s typical university student (the ones who can still read, and are not militant leftists of the sort for whom all ideas are an unwelcome challenge to their orthodoxy). I also appreciate my students, and enjoy reading their thoughts at the end of the semester. But eating ramen noodles in my office at 7:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, with toothpicks in my eyelids, is not my idea of holiday cheer. At least I have Bill Evans on the speakers to keep me from slipping completely into despair!

Anyway, enough of my whining, and back to apologizing. These first few months in Limbo have been so pleasant and encouraging, thanks to you, that I regret being out of contact with you for so long. To make it up to you, I promise that within the next few days, once my life is back into its more typical rhythm, and my eyes have stopped spinning, I will be back to posting regularly — more regularly, in fact — about all the day’s, the century’s, and eternity’s events. First up, to make up for lost time, will be a thorough review of recent matters in the world of politics and…well, everything is politics these days, sadly. In addition, I will be posting my first annual year-end review, wherein I highlight all the specific areas where civilization has slid furthest into its fated nihilistic progressive abyss during the past twelve months. It should be loads of fun, so I hope you’ll come back for that during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

In the meantime, to all my Christian friends, Merry Christmas! To all my Jewish friends, Happy Hanukkah! And to all those who somehow find it appropriate to take offense at other people expressing a greeting that means something deeply special to them, Happy Get-A-Life Day! 

All the best,
Daren Jonescu
P.S. A few years back, I wrote a Christmas Day article at American Thinker that I ought to revive this year. The piece was later adapted for use in the “Rise and Fall of the Didaskalocracy” chapter of my book, The Case Against Public Education, but the following link will take you to the original version on AT, In Praise of the Carpenter’s Son, a Teacher.

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