Merry Christmas!

A thoughtful Christmas, as we’re in the middle of an economic crisis and two wars.

The passing of Eartha Kitt, actress/singer/political activist.

A NY Times article on President-Elect Obama’s Hawaiian attitude. We should all have a little Hawaiian zen in us during these hard times and the holiday stresses.

How Christian is Christmas? Considering that Christmas co-opted some pagan practices and then there are those secular tendencies of Christmas, maybe we should try to accept that Christmas is rich and more than we think it is. An op-ed by Laura Miller, regarding C.S. Lewis’ portrayal of Christmas in Narnia.

Columns by NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman to get us thinking about the state of things in the middle of the holiday season of 2008:

Kristof notes that studies out there suggest that so-called liberals don’t individually give as much as so-called conservatives, even though the so-called liberals expect the government to do more and conservatives don’t think it’s the government’s job at all to do much (ok, I’m simplifying). He raises the interesting questions of what does it really mean to be generous during this time of year, and does your political outlook affect your generosity?

Friedman passionately notes about what Americans must do (and I found myself whole-heartily agreeing):

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions. [….]

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

Merry Christmas!

Well, let’s try to have some hope and cheer: a clip of “The Hard Nut” from YouTube, as I tend to think that it’s never quite the holidays until I view multiple versions of “The Nutcracker.”