Santa needs to bring us some sanity before rage consumes our Christmas spirit

  • By Petula Dvorak The Washington Post
  • Wednesday, December 23, 2015 3:54pm
  • OpinionCommentary

Santa, baby, just slip a little something useful under America’s Christmas tree.

We don’t need hoverboards, Apple watches, drones or the pie face game.

Our country needs courage. Reason. Sanity. But we’d settle for sedation.

Maybe a Valium in every stocking? Probably not. And if Santa did bring us some meds to soothe our collective rage, pharma bro Martin Shkreli would find a way to price gouge it.

There is too little Christmas spirit and too much fear and outright hatred.

On Monday morning, the schools in Nashua, New Hampshire, closed after a threat of violence supposedly aimed at two high schools. This, of course, follows the closing of the entire Los Angeles County school district after officials received similar threats last week.

The overreaction is understandable. There have been nearly 150 shootings on school campuses since 20 first-graders and six adults were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary rampage three years ago.

Oh, wait. A university professor in Florida insists that the Sandy Hook massacre was all a hoax and even harassed parents of one of the children killed, demanding proof that their little Noah was real and evidence they are the rightful owners of their dead child’s photographic image.

Don’t we all wish that wasn’t real.

Instead of passing common sense background checks and other limits that the majority of responsible gun owners support, the majority of our lawmakers did absolutely nothing.

Out of fear. Fear of the gun lobby and their millions in campaign cash and their army of angry voters.

Santa baby, slip some courage under their trees, please.

This week, as Christians across the country and the world celebrate the birth of a baby to two Middle Eastern refugees seeking shelter in a stable, too many people are buying into crazy talk about refugees, immigrants and Muslim Americans.

People have raised the possibility of internment camps for Muslims. The leading contender in the Republican race for the Oval Office has suggested that Muslims not be allowed into the country.

Earlier this month, I met the family of a Muslim Daisy Scout who worries she’ll never be able to leave America because she won’t be let back in. My children’s own classmates have worried aloud that the Muslim children in their school will be seized and deported.

More than half of the nation’s governors have said that Syrian refugees fleeing the holocaust in their homeland will not be welcome in America. There are few things less charitable than that stance.

Thousands of people gather at rallies staged by Donald Trump to cheer insults aimed at Muslims, Latinos, women, protesters, Republican rivals and anyone else he feels moved to heap hatred upon.

In Texas, Agriculture Secretary Sid Miller has declared that he is going to slap anyone who wishes him “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” this season.

It keeps getting harder to recognize our country amid all this ugly, mean-spirited rhetoric.

Santa baby, please bring this country courage. Tie a bow around some reason. Pack a giant heap of sanity into all our stockings. Hurry down that chimney.

Petula Dvorak is a Washington Post columnist.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
Editorial cartoons for Sunday, July 6

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

A Volunteers of America Western Washington crisis counselor talks with somebody on the phone Thursday, July 28, 2022, in at the VOA Behavioral Health Crisis Call Center in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Editorial: Dire results will follow end of LGBTQ+ crisis line

The Trump administration will end funding for a 988 line that serves youths in the LGBTQ+ community.

FILE — The journalist Bill Moyers previews an upcoming broadcast with staffers in New York, in March 2001. Moyers, who served as chief spokesman for President Lyndon Johnson during the American military buildup in Vietnam and then went on to a long and celebrated career as a broadcast journalist, returning repeatedly to the subject of the corruption of American democracy by money and power, died in Manhattan on June 26, 2025. He was 91. (Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times)
Comment: Bill Moyers and the power of journalism

His reporting and interviews strengthened democracy by connecting Americans to ideas and each other.

Brooks: AI can’t help students learn to think; it thinks for them

A new study shows deeper learning for those who wrote essays unassisted by large language models.

Do we have to fix Congress to get them to act on Social Security?

Thanks to The Herald Editorial Board for weighing in (probably not for… Continue reading

Comment: Keep county’s public lands in the public’s hands

Now pulled from consideration, the potential sale threatened the county’s resources and environment.

Comment: Companies can’t decide when they’ll be good neighbors

Consumers and officials should hold companies accountable for fair policies and fair prices.

Comment: State’s new tax on digital sales ads unfair and unwise

Washington’s focus on chasing new tax revenue could drive innovation and the jobs to other states.

toon
Editorial: Using discourse to get to common ground

A Building Bridges panel discussion heard from lawmakers and students on disagreeing agreeably.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, June 27, 2025. The sweeping measure Senate Republican leaders hope to push through has many unpopular elements that they despise. But they face a political reckoning on taxes and the scorn of the president if they fail to pass it. (Kent Nishimura/The New York Times)
Editorial: GOP should heed all-caps message on tax policy bill

Trading cuts to Medicaid and more for tax cuts for the wealthy may have consequences for Republicans.

Alaina Livingston, a 4th grade teacher at Silver Furs Elementary, receives her Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic for Everett School District teachers and staff at Evergreen Middle School on Saturday, March 6, 2021 in Everett, Wa. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: RFK Jr., CDC panel pose threat to vaccine access

Pharmacies following newly changed CDC guidelines may restrict access to vaccines for some patients.

Forum: Protecting, ensuring our freedoms in uncertain times

Independence means neither blind celebration nor helpless despair; it requires facing the work of democracy.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.