Merry Christmas
I hereby wish all of my subscribers a Merry Christmas.
I am in Dresden for the holidays, in my small apartment near the Elbe. The winter air is quite cold and clear and once again there is no snow. Dinner tonight will be fondue, and so I write this amidst grating what feels like a metric tonne of Gruyère with the world’s most dysfunctional cheese grater. Tomorrow, for the second day of Christmas, we will have the more traditional goose. Oh, and the wine: tonight there will be a crisp, dry Grüner Veltliner to accompany the cheese goop, and tomorrow the goose will go down with a Brunello di Montalcino.
My plan when I opened the text editor just now was to fire off a piece about the Trump administration’s visa sanctions against the noted Eurotard clown Thierry Breton and the censorship goons at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (an organisation that once upon a time went after the plague chronicle!), the Global Disinformation Index and Hate Aid. But, I find that I am in too good a mood for politics at the moment, so that post can wait for tomorrow.
I hope your Christmas culinary adventures unfold roughly as planned if not exactly as scripted, that you are enjoying the company of family and friends this season, and that you are full of optimism for 2026. If you have a moment, please let us know in comments what you’re up to and how things are going for you in your corner of the world.
I have always noticed that geese in Europe are vastly better behaved than geese in North America, even though the gravest American offenders (Canadian geese) are common here too. I propose this is because we more frequently eat geese here in Europe and they strive to keep a lower profile here, knowledgeable of their prey status.
Note to the Underground: Make a Christmas gift of a cheese grater to Brother E.