The Family Xmas Letter, 2023

Typical 2023: scattered focus, Felix half out of the picture

Why hello there, happy family! Where does this picture find you, and when? Surely not here, in the tiny unheated barn from which we write, nor now, on the very eve of a chilly California Christmas. No, this photo must be from a happier place and time, and certainly a warmer one. So join us, dear Reader, as we ride the Family Christmas Letter into the welcoming past, with, at our side, everyone's favorite...

THE HOUSE:

Out with the very old....

Years of training probably had you salivating for dog stories right about now, but Brekkie analytics show that most readers stop after the Qubit section so we've put her last. Besides, the main character this year is not everyone's favorite inkspot, it is the house, which we demo'd and then...well, actually, that's as far as we've gotten. Anticlimactic and maybe not the best way to start a Christmas missive, much less Christmas, but it was surely the only way to begin this long overdue project. As serial Brekkie readers will recall, moving is not an activity we enjoy, but it turns out doing it while your house is being ripped apart around you is even less fun. If you want to go for really bottom of the barrel misery, however, you should try doing this with COVID! We really, really, really hope the worst is behind us but if there isn't a 2024 Family Christmas Letter it's because it wasn't.

TALIA:

If this is what disaster looks like I'll take it

Though you may have reason to think otherwise (and certainly we do), the pandemic has ended and so, too, has Talia's COVID-focused startup. Leave it to her to make unemployment look so great some of the rest of us are tempted to try it, hint, hint. Having already stretched her legs on the Inca Trail and slogged through the mud at the wettest ever Burning Man, Talia is now training for the AIDS Ride with Team Qweirdos (real made up name: donate here!) on the assumption that her next employer will be just fine with her taking off to bike to LA. Talia turned 50 this year, was awarded a rusty railroad spike for services rendered, and got rid of her unproductive chickens less murderously than usual.

FELIX:

Bespeckled boy

Felix was a very good boy this year so Santa brought him a new bicycle (not true, it was used, and, as a reminder, it wasn't a gift), a new phone (remember last year's count?), and an updated Pet Rock. When not texting gibberish, you will find Felix traipsing through fields of giant thistles, or writing letters to the editor, or digging sea turtle nests on an equatorial beach, his favorite fave. New this year, a girlfriend! We couldn't secure photo rights in time for publication so you'll just have to take our word for it that she is taller, more athletic, and even lovelier than he is. It's been great having her around: she has taught us that it actually is possible for teenagers to drive and we have taught her that it is likewise possible to eat food from the sea.

GID:

Inspired

Gideon woke up with a Rattle and Hum Under a Blood Red Sky with bed head. He breakfasted on fruit from The Joshua Tree, roasted over The Unforgettable Fire, and set off for what turned out to be a very late lunch in San Rafael because the bus only costs a dollar and he hasn't learned to read transit maps. A quick study, he learned How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb before dinner, but somehow never did manage to clear the table afterwards. Gideon fell asleep reading Surrender, a tired Boy at the end of a long October day. During most of the other 364 days this year you would have found Gid lost in the Binding of Isaac, a video game that combines two fun things, born-again Christianity and child abuse. Gideon traveled this year to three cities, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, and now understands why you only eat cheesesteaks in one of them.

ALEC:

Not my worst day

As the photo suggests, 2023 did not always reward Alec as he deserved. He bikes for his health, but ends up in the hospital. He got his first new tie in decades but discovered he no longer fits in any of his suits. He inherited money but wishes he hadn't. And so on. At work, Alec is building the world's most advanced artificial intelligence system, but isn't that what pretty much everyone in Tech is claiming in their Family Christmas content? In the year's one unambiguous win, Alec is the last person in Marin to still refuse to take up pickleball and he is very comfortable with that so please stop asking.

QUBIT:

You can't hide the qute

Qubit joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she premiered "Dances-with-Tents," for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not really, but not less really than any of the stuff we've written about her in previous Letters. Qubit's still a dog, of course, and still adorable even when gobbling dehydrated cow gullet, wiping her nose on the dish towels, or licking your fresh-from-the-shower feet. Do not smell her breath after the cow gullet, however.

THE VACATIONS:

At the risk of interrupting your Roman holiday, we'd like to present the annual Family Vacation Slideshow, aka a lot of miscellaneous stuff from all over because both Talia and I put together an album and rather than make tough choices we just sped up the montage.

And so we come together to the end of another Family Christmas Letter. We hope this cold cry for warmth cheers your holiday and that you are facing 2024 with less trepidation than are we. Happy New Year everyone!

The Election

 

He's not joking

I have never been eligible to vote in the Netherlands but am nonetheless a regular user of the stemwijzer, an online survey meant to guide Dutch voters through a thicket of political acronyms. I consult it because it is a thrill to participate, even vicariously, in a democratic process that involves many political parties, several of whom align nicely with my own very leftie views (a sad contrast to the US elections which are, for me, an invariant choice between the lesser of two evils). My favorites never do as well as I'd like, but even the centrist Dutch parties are pursuing policies I generally support, and it is the centrist parties that are the real winners time and again.

Not this election. In a pendulum swing pushed by immigration pressures, a long-standing housing crisis, leftover resentment at COVID-era policy, and contentious reforms to agriculture and related ecological issues, the furthest-right party has taken a huge number of parliamentary seats from the former leaders of the ruling coalition, and now controls almost a quarter of the "Tweede Kamer," or Dutch House of Representatives.

The leader of the winning party, pictured above, is a demagogue whom many are comparing with Trump: anti-immigrant, isolationist, inflammatory, careless of his country's constitution, funny-looking, in short, a political party of one with strong authoritarian inclinations. He is all this, but unlike Trump, whose only policy goal is his own aggrandizement, this politician believes in something outside himself: that the presence of Islam in the Netherlands is an existential threat to his retrogressive vision for that country. And unlike Trump, whose capacity for governing is limited and who just isn't that bright, this man, Geert Wilders, is an experienced and capable politician who speaks in whole sentences and is able to comport himself as an adult.

Most of my Dutch social circle is as left-leaning as I am, and, to judge by what I read on WhatsApp, are deeply worried about what comes next. They are also no doubt humiliated and offended to discover themselves now the smaller part of an electorate promoting an extremist who so clearly rejects social values they hold dear, such as tolerance and an open embrace of the wide world outside this small country's borders. Certainly part of my horror in watching Trump's eager celebration by a huge number of my fellow citizens is the realization, always there but usually ignored, that I am so not like they.

I have bad news and worse news, friends. The bad news is that even if Wilders fails to form a ruling coalition, he isn't going away: having won, his presence, if not his premiership, will be an even greater hindrance than previously to progress as you and I define it. The worse news is that regardless of his impact on the Netherlands, the insult of his election, which is to say the impact of this on your innerlands, is never really going to get better. The world has revealed itself to be a shittier place than you thought and, in the same stroke, has become even harder to fix.