Christmas will never be the same again. For the same reason that America will never be the same again. Millions of us will never be able to look upon some of our fellow Americans – including some of our friends and family members – as we once did, ever again.

The ones who turned their backs on us – and worse – for questioning what we rightly identified as a mass hysteria they embraced. Who feared and loathed us, because we would not wear a “mask” – which we didn’t because we knew that putting it on only fueled the mass hysteria. We didn’t wear the things for their sakes as well as our own. For the sake of calm and common sense. To show normality rather than “masked” insanity. For doing that – often at the cost of being denied not merely service but our ability to earn a living – we were abused as pathologically selfish, granny-killing ne’er do-wells.

They told us we weren’t welcome in their homes at Christmas. That we weren’t welcome, period. Unless, of course, we bought in to their hysteria and played along.

We who questioned – and disobeyed – were cast out, by those who did not question and mindlessly obeyed.

Some of these friends and family members would have supported more than just excommunicating us from their  homes and lives and from society, generally. When the drugs that aren’t vaccines were rolled out, many were in favor of everyone being forced to take them. Tens of millions of people were effectively forced to take them, being under duress. They were told to take the drugs – or take a hike. Lose your job – or lose your bodily autonomy and your self-respect, having bent knee to a violation of your body for the sake of grubby money.

Some of the most hysteric wanted (and no doubt still want in their secret hearts) to see everyone forced to take the drugs they took, perhaps for the same vicious and ugly reason that some people resent people who “get away” with not being made to do what they were made to do.

They then blamed us when they got the sickness they’d been “vaccinated” against. The illogic of that escaping them.

Now we are supposed to pretend it all never happened and sit down for Christmas dinner with these people. It is not quite sleeping with the enemy but it’s not that far from it, either. For, no matter the superficialities, the feigned pleasantries of our previous association, they regard us with suspicion and contempt.

Just as we so regard them.

They know we know what they did, just as we know they know what we didn’t do. They perhaps feel ashamed, some of them. In which case, it would help things greatly if they were to say so – and ask our forgiveness for what they did to us and supported being done to us. We might then be able to forgive them.

But can we ever trust them again? Would George Washington have given Benedict Arnold another command, if he’d apologized for betraying Washington’s trust? Only if Washington were an idiot.

Are we?

What we are wrestling with is a far more profound form of betrayal. It is personal, familiar. Intimate. People we thought we knew, in many cases friends of decades’-long standing. People we grew up with, sat around the Christmas dinner table with. Of course we had our differences. We knew that Uncle Jeff was a Democrat and he knew we were not. What we did not know – before – was that Uncle Buck would support our being treated as black Americans were treated in the Jim Crow South. The same Uncle Buck who smiled in our faces, shook our hand and hugged us as we left the Christmas gathering just the year before the mass hysteria descended.

How do we sit across the Christmas table from Uncle Buck this year?

Maybe it would be better not to. For the same reason it is better to not pretend to be friends with someone you know isn’t, really. Someone you now know you cannot count on to be your friend except in the most superficial and meaningless sense. The wave across the fence to a neighbor sense.

Only with more reason, if the person is a relative.

A parent. A sibling. Someone who not only knows you but has known you since there was a you. To be betrayed by someone like that – for the sake of someone like Dr. Fauci – is something that can never be taken back, even if apologized for.

Better to gather this Christmas with friends and family whom you know are just that – because you know they didn’t betray you for the sake of someone like Dr. Fauci. Even if that means you spend Christmas by yourself. For – as Washington once said – ‘Tis better to be alone than in poor company. 

Amen.

And Merry Christmas!