Tonight The Wife and I ring in 2009 as we celebrated much of 2008, in the company of each other and great food. The menu, chez Martin:

Scallops, brussels sprouts, bacon, preserved lemon crème fraîche

Pappardelle, black Oregon truffles, five-year-old Parmigiano-Reggiano

Galettes de sarrasin, apple compote, salted caramel, almonds, Roquefort-honey ice cream

Bon appetit to you and yours, and may your 2009 be filled with great health, great food, great novels, and someone with whom to share life’s rich pageant.

I’ll take you yanquis seriously about your precious doctrine of separation of church and state when you as a nation demand all federal, state, county, and local government facilities remain open for business on 25 December, just like any other day.

So long as government offices remain closed on 25 December, however, you’re simply continuing the tradition of bowing to tragically misguided church authority, from the Catholic Church on down through its Protestant spawn.

And, in turn, you are bowing to pagan idolatry:

Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. . . . But they are altogether brutish and foolish; the stock [tree] is a doctrine of vanities. Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder: blue and purple is their clothing: they [the trees] are all the work of cunning men.

Granted, Jeremiah is telling only the Israelites not to follow pagan customs (such as seasonal feasts of the Solstice or Equinox), but I still don’t understand why any Christian today would want to (especially given Paul’s dismissal, “we know that an idol is nothing in the world,” and then his admonition to the wise nevertheless to “flee from idolatry”).

It always makes me cringe when people demand that Christ be put back in Christmas; He was never in Christmas in the first place. 

If you want to bow to mediæval church authority and idolatrous pagan customs, feel free to celebrate Christmas. And while you’re at it, why not celebrate the Hajj, too? It’s as Christian as Christmas is.

For those who feel the need to celebrate Christ’s birth, do so on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

You are, of course, bound to no celebrations. Which is the way I like to celebrate just another day. 

Flight to San Francisco delayed (of course), which gives me a few minutes to rant . . .

After reading today’s LA Times article about Nancy Silverton and the Madoff Affair, I wondered why people continue to trust other people . . . especially with their money?

Life is much easier when you lend no one but your family and your very closest friends your trust. And even then you can’t be too sure.

At this time of the year, when people are so full of misguided cheer, it’s essential we remember that simple truth.

Some days being a writer makes you feel like God.

Some days being a writer makes you feel like Sisyphus; instead of endlessly rolling the boulder up a hill, however, you’re simply beating your forehead bloody against the boulder.

It’s not often that the blue half of Merseyside does a favour for the red half, but Everton’s 0 – 0 draw with Chelsea today guarantees Liverpool remains in top spot in the Premiership.

Unfortunately, Everton, like Liverpool in our 1 – 1 draw against Arsenal on Sunday, couldn’t take advantage of playing against ten men.

I can’t remember another season where one team’s stumble results not in punishment but in their competitors’ equal stumbling, slip ups unable to be capitalised upon. This could make for an incredibly tense second half of the season.

YNWA.

What a sad and pathetic little country my England has become:

. . . [W]hat the BBC is doing is pandering to the wishes of extremists. I mean it. There is no difference in my book between the spokesman for Viva! and suicide bombers who fly planes into tall buildings. Both believe they are right and, crucially, neither wants the other point of view to be heard. . . .

I even saw some hopeless MP on TV saying we should go back to the days of proper comedy like Fawlty Towers . . . in which I seem to recall Basil pretended to be Hitler and made some Germans cry. I promise you this: that scene today would not be broadcast because out there somewhere is a Kraut in an attic with a bad temper and a big mouth.

Political correctness has strangled, raped, and mutilated common sense.

Continuing the Madoff saga, from Ronald A Cass’ WSJ op-ed piece, “Madoff Exploited the Jews”:

. . . Mr. Madoff, it seems, targeted other Jews, drawing them in at least in some measure because of a shared faith.

. . . The sense of common heritage, of community, also makes it less seemly to ask hard questions. Pressing a fellow parishioner or club member for hard information is like demanding receipts from your aunt—it just doesn’t feel right. Hucksters know that, they play on it, and they count on our trust to make their confidence games work.

. . . The violation of trust at the heart of that story—of trust by those with the greatest reason to trust—cries out for sympathy. It illustrates the limits of law, not the need for more of it.

That’s why I won’t belong to any organisation that has humans as members. All I’ll share with my fellow men is a very healthy skepticism, especially for those who promise to help me.