What to believe in this Christmas, even if you don’t believe in anything |
Christmas is here. After a week in which our collective emotional paralysis effectively stopped the clock, what follows now seems strangely fraught. The last-minute rush to organise things. The struggle to get back to normal, whatever that is. And a desire, somehow, to make it to the Yuletide finish line, turkey in hand. How are we supposed to do that when it sometimes it feels impossible to muster even a smile?
2025 has been one of those years. Another one. Seemingly worse than the ones that came before it. It flew by. (Let’s be honest, a moment ago, it was March.) As it ends, there’s a laundry list of challenges on the refrigerator door of our souls: global conflicts, political polarisation and the pressure of fewer jobs and higher living costs.
A circle was formed in the ocean to pay respect to those killed and injured on Sunday.Credit: Getty
As if that were not enough, now, in the last gasp of the year, the spectre of terrorism has cast a long shadow upon us all. Jewish Australians are unsafe in our beloved public spaces and rightly angry. The rush to blame has overtaken the need to grieve. And many of us, on the sidelines, immobilised by the emotional toll, are uncertain what to do next.
However you plan to spend the next few days, it’s important we refocus our collective hopes. Christmas trees, tinsel and shiny baubles and decorations might seem flimsy and insubstantial, but they are proof that in a........