Like Icarus' dark twin, the Saint reaches for the moon instead of the sun, only to fall back to earth in a bright shower of wrapped presents, falling through millions of chimneys to disappoint millions of children on Christmas morning. The brilliant crimson of his clothing dazzles me, yet dims beside the warm glow in my heart. I long to suckle his toes beneath the mistletoe; his missile-toes. "Launch, of please launch!", I stop myself from imploring him. His reindeer are the only witnesses, and they will never tell.
Gideon Zuckbergstein looked through the window at the goys. Sitting around, pulling their crackers. It reminded him of high school, of how he once got invited to a Christmas party in senior year. Only for people to politely ignore him. Except for Sandra McWasp. Ah, Sandra McWasp. Sandra, who pretended she barely noticed him. Until she "accidentally" bumped into him outside, having a cigarette. Before blowing him behind Chester Roosevelt's brand-new Chevrolet convertible. Now *that* was the spirit of Christmas - back when he could still get it up.
David Bentley Hart (an excerpt from 'The Genealogy of Genealogy,' 4 October 2025, Christmas edit by me, with love):
'On the subject of Christmas, we have become accustomed, to the point that it is not so much a habit of mind as an unreflective instinct, to the hermeneutics of suspicion—whether in a Darwinian, Nietzschean, Freudian, or post-modern key, or in some other key within the same diapason. We are predisposed on almost all occasions to assume that the manifest image of things dissembles a deeper and more troubling truth; that geological epochs and generations of phylogenic precursors lie hidden like a yawning chasm beneath the earth upon which Father Christmas, or Our Father, dwells in the dark backward and abysm of time; that all apparent sympathy or desire for cooperation – invited at the festive season - dissembles a relentless evolutionary engine of selfishness and the drive to survive at all costs; that every document, even the untutoredly covetous ‘letter to Santa’ of the smallest child, is a palimpsest concealing countless layers of occluded text that, if they could be uncovered, would shatter all our complacencies regarding the world we think we know. At its most vulgar, our Christmas obsession expresses itself in an insatiable appetite for conspiracy theories, which our current era has transformed from the occasional fixation of a small coterie of paranoids and schizophrenics into vast contagions of hysteria and nihilistic political movements. At its most rarified, it takes the academic form of intellectual, cultural, and ideological ‘genealogy’. I am not sure which of these is ultimately the more pernicious in its effects upon the soul, though obviously the former is the more devastating on a public scale.'
Surely Olivia Nuzzi would be the topical choice?
Like Icarus' dark twin, the Saint reaches for the moon instead of the sun, only to fall back to earth in a bright shower of wrapped presents, falling through millions of chimneys to disappoint millions of children on Christmas morning. The brilliant crimson of his clothing dazzles me, yet dims beside the warm glow in my heart. I long to suckle his toes beneath the mistletoe; his missile-toes. "Launch, of please launch!", I stop myself from imploring him. His reindeer are the only witnesses, and they will never tell.
Haha!
I might have preferred to do Borges, but it would have required too much thought.
A good parody is harder than it looks.
Philip Roth:
Gideon Zuckbergstein looked through the window at the goys. Sitting around, pulling their crackers. It reminded him of high school, of how he once got invited to a Christmas party in senior year. Only for people to politely ignore him. Except for Sandra McWasp. Ah, Sandra McWasp. Sandra, who pretended she barely noticed him. Until she "accidentally" bumped into him outside, having a cigarette. Before blowing him behind Chester Roosevelt's brand-new Chevrolet convertible. Now *that* was the spirit of Christmas - back when he could still get it up.
Nice.
Well, I think worst option would be Judith Butler, but she's so incoherent that I couldn't possibly match her prose style.
Thanks for this post today. It brought Christmas cheer.
😱😂 That was great! (No wonder your students can’t understand you, you are leagues above them, “Genius Verne”.😂)
David Bentley Hart (an excerpt from 'The Genealogy of Genealogy,' 4 October 2025, Christmas edit by me, with love):
'On the subject of Christmas, we have become accustomed, to the point that it is not so much a habit of mind as an unreflective instinct, to the hermeneutics of suspicion—whether in a Darwinian, Nietzschean, Freudian, or post-modern key, or in some other key within the same diapason. We are predisposed on almost all occasions to assume that the manifest image of things dissembles a deeper and more troubling truth; that geological epochs and generations of phylogenic precursors lie hidden like a yawning chasm beneath the earth upon which Father Christmas, or Our Father, dwells in the dark backward and abysm of time; that all apparent sympathy or desire for cooperation – invited at the festive season - dissembles a relentless evolutionary engine of selfishness and the drive to survive at all costs; that every document, even the untutoredly covetous ‘letter to Santa’ of the smallest child, is a palimpsest concealing countless layers of occluded text that, if they could be uncovered, would shatter all our complacencies regarding the world we think we know. At its most vulgar, our Christmas obsession expresses itself in an insatiable appetite for conspiracy theories, which our current era has transformed from the occasional fixation of a small coterie of paranoids and schizophrenics into vast contagions of hysteria and nihilistic political movements. At its most rarified, it takes the academic form of intellectual, cultural, and ideological ‘genealogy’. I am not sure which of these is ultimately the more pernicious in its effects upon the soul, though obviously the former is the more devastating on a public scale.'
The Christmas edit should be its own subgenre.
Hilariously well done!
Have you seen my comic about David Benatar’s Night Before Christmas?
I have not. Point me in the right direction.
https://open.substack.com/pub/petemandik/p/merry-grinchmas?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Outstanding.
Chuck Palahniuk or Stephen King..
I actually think King would do a good job, a “Nightmare Before Christmas” kind of thing. But Palahniuk… I agree.