A Very Republican Christmas Carol

by | Dec 23, 2024 | Opinions & Commentary

Image: EyeEm Mobile GmbH, iStockphoto

A Very Republican Christmas Carol

by | Dec 23, 2024 | Opinions & Commentary

Image: EyeEm Mobile GmbH, iStockphoto

In their Christmas Carol, there would only be the continuing waking nightmare visited upon good people, by men and women of privilege whose souls or humanity could no longer be reached.

Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

It’s Christmas Eve in Washington, D.C. and from a second-floor banquet room, uproarious laughter rings out from behind frost-covered windows and into the snow-speckled sky.

Around a massive table piled to overflowing with food and wine, sit a bloated and blurry-eyed Donald Trump and Elon Musk—along with a snarling, cackling cadre of Republican lawmakers, FoxNews anchors, and celebrity evangelists. They’re regaling one another with joyous eyewitness accounts of the pair of recent uninvited and already-evicted supernatural dinner guests.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present have both just been summarily dismissed, their best efforts to show those gathered, the abject terror and unfathomable suffering they’ve already visited upon the people entrusted to them—easily drowned out by the din of their jeers and slurs and cries of “fake news”.

In exaggerated gyrations around the table, they now slap their knees and wipe tears from the corners of their eyes, incredulous at the two banished specters’ naivety, in believing their dire revelations of American agony would be found remotely moving to them.

Suddenly, a wide and towering figure materializes from the ether, shrouded completely in black, save for a long skeletal hand: The Ghost of Christmas Future.

It moves swiftly toward the table and before those gathered can utter a word, they’re suddenly whisked from that room and into streets and living rooms and hospital and funeral homes and schools throughout this country.

In vivid and sickening detail, the apparition shows them the coming America their present deeds are surely birthing:

  • a couple with a terminally-ill daughter sells their dream home to pay the sky-scraping premiums on care for her very survival.
  • a migrant toddler at the border screams in scalding panic, looking for parents she cannot find and she will likely never see again.
  • the grieving family of a bullied Transgender college student speaks words around his casket about the incessant violence he endured, and the deadly cost of a President who banned mention of his very humanity and made him feel unworthy to live.
  • a Muslim teenager again sits alone in her high school cafeteria, surrounded on all sides by the stares and snickers of her peers, emboldened by parents who now conflate her faith with terrorism.
  • the parents of a high school student run frantically toward their son’s school, now surrounded by police, while they read his terrified texts as a shooter tries to enter his classroom.
  • a single father finds himself awake in the middle of the night, pushed toward homelessness and feeling helpless to take care of his children, with so few resources and no way to earn a wage to sustain them all.
  • a young woman wears her trauma on the inside, so desiring to speak the truth of the damage done to her by a man she once dated, but knowing that staying silent will be less painful, given what she has seen other accusers endure.

The grotesque vignettes all begin to pile onto one another in rapid succession, along with the anguished cries of hundreds of thousands of people who will soon find themselves alone, mourning, silenced, bullied and terrorized in this future these men are constructing together.

The sounds and pictures then begin to multiply; rising and spinning into a horrible, thunderous, disorienting whirlwind around them—and then, as if deposited from a roller coaster, it all screeches to halt and they once again find themselves in the room where they began.

The ghost stares at the group gathered around the table awaiting their response, as breathless, they pause for a moment and look at one another.

“Woke idiots!” Vivek Ramaswamy mutters, breaking the thick silence and bringing an explosion of sarcastic laughter from every corner of the room.

Seeing the vivid, supernatural vision of the suffering of the sick and the poor and the vulnerable they will be responsible for if unmoved from their current course, they are not terrified or racked with guilt—but greatly overjoyed.

“Seriously, Specter,” Elon bellows, “is this supposed to bother us? You’re gonna have to do better than that!”

“Yeah,” adds Jim Jordan, “what did you think we’re doing here?”

An inebriated Steve Bannon staggers in from the hall wearing a filthy Santa suit. “This is the whole point, you black apparition” he brags, as a smile curls across his lips. “This has been the plan all along, this is what we wanted.”

“Yeah, and wait until you see Project 2025!” Trump adds, before spitting his drink all over himself and falling from his chair.

A flood of self-congratulatory embraces breaks out around the table, and as the throng of jubilant rich men celebrates—the Ghost of Christmas Future departs, shaking his head as he realizes that what he intended for them as fearful warnings, were instead, welcomed predictions.

There would be no Christmas morning miracle.

There would be no dawn awakening of changed men and women, so long asleep in their greed and contempt, now reborn.

There would be no rewriting of sad coming days for those who they’ve disregarded.

There would be no change of fortune for so many overworked and invisible.

There would be no healing of a sick child, too tiny to be noticed.

There would be no “God bless us, every one,” spoken around a welcoming table big enough for all.

There would only be the continuing waking nightmare visited upon good people, by men and women of privilege whose souls or humanity could no longer be reached—even by the terrible vision of what they were making and the knowledge of the harm they would cause.

While outside there would be great mourning on that morning, they would go on peacefully sleeping right through it.

This was the Christmas they’d been dreaming of for their entire lives.

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.

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