I don’t know how we arrived at a place where we thought everyone would support democracy because it was an intellectually superior form of government. All of human history contradicts that notion.
Christmas as we know it—the trees and wreaths, bells and caroling, gifts and good food—is a 19th-century invention. The authors, literally, of the modern celebration were a Stockbridge spinster and a German immigrant: Catharine Sedgwick and Charles Follen.
