Holidays

Story Stream

Gen Z’s Politics Are Hard to Categorize December 24, 2024

We live, at first blush, under the absolute dominion of celebrity. The former and future president of the United States spent more than a decade as a reality TV star. Taylor Swift just concluded the largest and most lucrative pop music tour in the hi...

Our Holiday Reading Picks December 24, 2024

As life slows down for most of us, the Christmas season is a great time for extra reading. Law & Liberty‘s staff, contributing editors, and senior writers offer some recommendations....

How to Give a Real Gift December 24, 2024

This month as I, and the rest of the world, have conducted the rounds of shopping for Christmas and Hanukkah and the holidays in general, I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to give a good gift. What can I possibly buy that they don’...

The Lie Before Christmas December 24, 2024

At this time of year, nowhere in Britain has a firmer grip on the public imagination than Rosehill Cottage from The Holiday. In recent years the Nancy Meyers film has overtaken Love Actually as our platonic ideal of a Christmas film; the chocolate-bo...

The Absurd Genius of Netflix Christmas Films December 23, 2024

Ah, the holidays, that season of sensory delights. A Christmas tree twinkling in the corner, the scent of cinnamon wafting through the air, and on the television, a wholesome, snow-draped fantasy film driven by one pivotal question: What if Frosty th...

The 12 Oscar Contenders of Christmas December 23, 2024

The awards circus takes a two-week break around the holidays,* returning on January 5 for the Golden Globes. That makes the week before Christmas the perfect time to zoom out and take stock of the wider race. Which Oscar hopefuls have done enough to ...

A Very Merry Tom Wolfe Christmas December 18, 2024

My younger self would be appalled by the person I’ve become around the holidays....

Winter 2024 Book List December 17, 2024

It is the “holiday season,” which means it’s time for you to make your sacrificial offering to the Baals of our cult of consumerism…I mean, to commemorate the Almighty’s gift-of-self by giving gifts to your loved ones....

AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2024 December 13, 2024

Percival Everett’s twist on Huckleberry Finn; biographies of Reagan and Isherwood, Didion, and Babitz; and more holiday reading for every type....

Was 'Fat Is a Feminist Issue' Liberating? December 10, 2024

The history of how women have endeavored to change, and usually shrink, the shape of our bodies is littered with artifacts so horrible they are often humorous: the massive, vibrating Magic Couch that promised 1950s husbands weight loss for their wive...

The World of Tomorrow December 10, 2024

Progress used to be glamorous. For the first two thirds of the twentieth-century, the terms modern, future, and world of tomorrow shimmered with promise.Glamour is more than a synonym for fashion or celebrity, although these things can certainly be g...

Hughes for the Holidays December 09, 2024

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the golden age of entertainment was in the late-1980s and 1990s. Historian Rudyard Lynch of the popular YouTube channel, “WhatIfAltHist,” quite astutely calls this pre-millennium era “John Hughes and ...

The One Hundred Pages Strategy December 09, 2024

Almost nothing I have written in the last few years has given rise to more correspondence than a throwaway column about reading, in which I alluded to what I call the “hundred pages strategy.” This is exactly what it sounds like: every day, come rain...

The 50 Best Airplane Movies, Ranked December 05, 2024

Over the holiday season, something like 7.5 million people will step foot in an airport and take to the skies. That’s a lot of delays, a lot of airport beers, and a lot of wondering about how the person in front of you has seemingly never gone throug...

The 2024 Sweat Science Holiday Book List December 03, 2024

Nothing says “winter holidays” to me like the combo of a cold day, a warm fire, a soft couch, and a book. If you’re looking for some couch material—or gift ideas for the endurance people in your life—here are the books I’ve enjoyed most this year tha...

'Moana 2' Is a Watered-Down Rehash of the Original December 03, 2024

On the fictional South Pacific island of Motunui, there now exists a variety of tween girl known as the “Moanabe” (pronounced “Mo-wannabe”). These eager, sometimes awkward young ladies stan a queen who’s also well known to the rest of the world: the ...

Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece November 28, 2024

Thanksgiving is unique among American holidays because it’s not simply political, like Independence Day, which belongs only to Americans, nor simply a religious celebration shared among all Christians, like Christmas or Easter. It’s a mix of the two,...

Why Thanksgiving Is My Favorite Holiday November 28, 2024

When I had only lived in the United States for a couple of months, I met a new acquaintance for coffee. We had a nice conversation about literature and grad school, about New York City and smoked fish. As I was taking my leave, she off-handedly asked...

I’m Not Like Other Gift Guides November 27, 2024

Every book is a gift <3 But while the holidays are notoriously a time for a well-meaning aunt to gift you a copy of a memoir by an Obama, we all deserve more. We put together a list of Language Arts-approved books for everyone on your list....

The People’s Champ Has Lost His People November 26, 2024

Picture this, because it really happened: Dwayne Johnson stands in an IMAX theater, taking Christopher Nolan's seat. "I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits," he said in a recent interview with Imax. "They said, 'Chris sits here.'" He watches Op...

The Napkin Project (Holiday Edition) December 12, 2023

When we set out to publish this special holiday edition of The Napkin Project, we knew that we didn’t want to tell typical holiday stories. No treacle-y tales of family, forgiveness, and full hearts—that’s not our style.And so, when we asked five tre...

The White Pill Holiday Gift Guide December 05, 2023

Welcome reader, it’s the first annual White Pill holiday gift guide, ho ho ho! In past issues of the weekly newsletter (read the most recent here), we’ve occasionally linked to products that caught our eye. This gift guide collects some of the most c...

A Brit’s Ode to Thanksgiving November 23, 2023

Other people’s festivals and holidays are enthralling. I have found it a very special privilege to be in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, or in Cairo on a Friday morning. Simply to feel the common agreement to behave differently on this day is a key to a wo...

What We’re Grateful For November 23, 2023

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Which means you will sit down to eat. The turkey will be carved and ready. The sides will look irresistible. You’ll be eager to dig in. And then there’ll come the clink of a knife on glass and the request that everyone say w...

Leave Thanksgiving Alone! November 23, 2023

Several years ago (I don’t remember when, exactly) the mainstream press concluded that Americans no longer possess the social wherewithal to gather unaided for Thanksgiving. According to this new journalistic consensus, which seemed to arise without ...