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This year the contrast between the original story of Christmas and its Australian circumstances has cut even deeper. Bushfires have taken lives, destroyed properties and spread smoke and ash over cities. If the theme of the first Christmas was one of hope and joy, behind the bushfires this year lurks anxiety about the future of the world.
Dance and music are as innate as breathing. Babies dance while in the womb, and the Yuletide can be prime time for 'playing music, singing and dancing [as a] healthy outlet for their emotions'. As William Stafford observed, kids dance 'before they learn there is anything that isn't music'.
Now that I'm grown I've realised that while Christmas felt that way for me, it isn't magical for everyone. For many people Christmas is a hollow reminder that there is someone missing from the table, and no matter whether it's the first year or the 50th, that chair will always remain empty.
Tired and world weary, the British electorate went to the polls. Rarely in history can there have been such an assemblage of unelectable or disappointing types standing for office or trying to remain in it. It proved to be an ugly boredom, though it was uglier for some than others.
Dickens was a prolific writer, and one of patchy quality: the threat of sentimentality was never far away, so that this brief work is not one of his best. But in this consumer age it is salutary to have his definition of the Christmas spirit, which is one 'of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance'.
Outside, a Martian-red haze kisses the windows. An ode to the future perhaps. Most of the people present are already aware of the Medevac repeal decision. The room is heavy with silence, the mood is sombre, but far from resigned. We want change, and are willing to have a crack at demanding it.
It's that time again, when exhausted teachers are wondering whether they'll make the distance and finish the school year with their sanity more or less intact. It's also the time when they have to endure snide remarks about 'a really cushy job' and 'all those holidays'. But it's not a cushy job. I know: my brother and I were third-generation teachers.
Politicians love to remind minorities to integrate. Minority kids by and large resent these calls, because they are desperate to integrate. South Asian kids like me and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor were among those wishing to be Australian or British. Our idols were Bruce Springsteen and Jim Kerr, not Abu Bakr Baghdadi or Osama bin Ladin.
In Malta, shudders are being felt through the media and political establishment. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has announced his intention to resign. Other officials are doing the same. Malta's equivalent of the accusing ghost of Banquo is that of the slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb in October 2017.
After spirit-lamps were doused the house drew in upon itself; its clutch of dreamers moaned and tossed in stifling mosquito nets — each isolating sac of mesh a Magellanic cloud.
Dominant ideals of masculinity do not materialise out of thin air. They are produced and reproduced by people, institutions, policies and other social forces, and there are places in Australia where efforts to promote or defend traditional ideals of masculinity seem particularly energetic.
While there is value in pointing out incorrect or inappropriate behaviour, we are also at a point where we are perhaps a little too quick to declare someone or something 'cancelled'. Many problematic depictions have occurred over the years, and we do ourselves no favours by ignoring them or pretending they did not exist.
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