Every year this time, I publish a special Yule-time newsletter. This isn’t it. This is the one I write before hand, while I wring my hands and wonder what I have to say this year. But I take it all seriously because I’m a bit of a Yule enthusiast, you see. I like the holiday. I want to reform it, though, because I truly believe the holiday doesn’t have to be so starkly nihilistic, the way consumer-capitalism tries to make everything.

Yule, or Christmas, or whatever, doesn’t have to be hollow or performative, a dreary ‘spending’ holiday. We can take it back. We can make it about family and friends. I mean it’s all a construct, anyway, why not make it a good construct? Wait—I had a card for this.

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So, this year, and not wanting to repeat myself by accident, I decided to read back on a few of my older Yule-time newsletters. Some of them were quite good, and I thought I’d share some of my favorite bits.

Apparently, this time last year, I was somewhat concerned aliens — as all serious-minded people should be, I suppose.

“So, I’m wondering – is this an alien invasion? And if not, why not, and is there something we might do to make such a thing occur? Should I paint the words PLEASE INVADE US on my roof? I haven’t done that yet because it’s not a very large roof and there’s not enough room for the words I DON’T MEAN YOU, CHINA!”

A year has passed and (I’m sorry to note) we are all sadly still living under human rule. There was a rather good documentary put out this month on Amazon Prime, called, Age of Disclosure; it’s a few dozen interviews with senior Pentagon officials (and that little Marco Rubio feller) and they’re all saying a lot of unsettling things about aliens visiting the Earth. If you think it’s all a hoax, you might want to check that documentary out before you say something too skeptical about aliens, and inadvertently embarrassing yourself in polite society.

Now, back in the Christmas of 2023, I was concerned about my mother’s dog, Charlie.

“As I sit here reflecting, it strikes me as both relevant and noteworthy that a few years ago, my brother-in-law was also bitten by a zebra. No, I’m not making any of that up — when I make up stories, they tend to be more plausible. But what happened was, my brother-in-law visited a zoo, and there found himself confronted by an unusually irritable zebra, who then bit him.

These tales annoy me because I approve of my brother-in-law and he simply does not deserve such savagery — neither from a zebra, nor Charlie, nor anybody else. He’s also been married to my younger-sister for more than a decade and frankly, I think he’s suffered enough.”

An update on that, Charlie is much happier these days, and I plan to write a follow-up about him early next year. If curious in the meantime, I recently pasted a photo of Charlie into the bottom of that story, so you can see how cute he is.

Anyhow, the year before that, my father was still alive, and boring the hell out of me with his endless cricket talk. Someone told me Australia won the Ashes this year. Let me reiterate:

“If an Australian suspects you’re not paying attention to cricket, they’ll want an explanation. If you just admit to not caring, they’ll ask why. In that case, whatever you do, don’t give them a reason, because it will only confuse them. As far as they’re aware, everyone likes cricket. You can’t say, ‘well, the game drags on a bit, doesn’t it?’. They’ll just stare at you, wondering what’s the matter with you, and why you invited Satan into your heart.”

The Christmas before that, I wrote about how I grew up without compliments. As in, I never received any. I was a creative kid, and it was the eighties. I think my parents worried that too much flattery might turn me gay.

“I baked a sponge cake, and then my mother complimented it. Actually … it was more that she praised it. Like, six times. Which is somewhat more than the number of times I was complimented in the nineties.”

But after reading back over my most recent few Christmas newsletters, my favorite was written around the time my (then) small daughters introduced me to The Sound of Music. I had sensibly avoided watching it my entire life; musicals make me break out in hives. I’m being serious with you.

What I recall vividly is being deeply impressed with Christopher Plummer.

“It’s 1938, and he driving around town in a convertible with his openly gay friend. I think he’s gay. It’s 1938, as I said, and the man seem to work in musical theater, so I’m going with my instincts on this one. Anyway, what do you know — Von Trapp is dating a baroness? She’s a hot piece of Nazi crumpet, it turns out. This Captain Von Trapp is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Then this wayward nanny appears in the narrative. I do not approve of her in the least. She has this poor man’s kids singing songs, and interested pursuing careers in musical theater. Captain Von Trapp is a good man. He deserves none of this.

“And I watch on helplessly in silence as his eldest daughter goes sneaking out at night to meet a creepy Nazi boy. I want to throw things, break things. I want to warn her father, but I am powerless. It’s the nanny’s fault. Anybody can see it’s the nanny’s fault. What a horrible situation, it’s even worse than being surrounded by Nazis.”

This was some good stuff. My Yule-time newsletters have been on point for several years. I’m writing my next one tomorrow and I have no idea how I’m ever going to do better than that.

The other thing I did, was I went and read over the final chapters of my Harvard Skull Fiasco books. Now, these are books about librarians, which means — somewhat unfairly, in my view — they would receive an immediate pass from any literary agent or publisher. I self-published them because I actually believe them to be nice books. They’re happy, and cheerful, and every page has a line or two which makes me snicker. No point leaving them in the desk drawer for several decades.

So, I published them, and then — did absolutely no marketing, which is, of course, absolutely not how to do this. All the same, I do not seem to care. The Harvard Skull Fiasco is many things, but fundamentally it is about what I think Christmas is for me.

(A friend of mine texted me a few days, ‘You are seriously the most enthusiastic Christmasser I know. I kinda love it’. I get it: nobody looking at me would suspect it either.)

Anyway, The Harvard Skull Fiasco series contain my favorite Christmas story, and people who like funny books enjoy it immensely. So, for the next few weeks, you can download them for free. You’re welcome.

In other news, I am really, really bad at Capitalism; on the other hand, I’m fun to be around at Christmas.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel