A Traditional Christmas Needs A Real Downtown, New Urbs, Matthias Leyrer, December 8, 2017

This article comes from the New Urbs project at The American Conservative, and it’s a lovely ode to the kinds of built environments that jibe with and enhance the spirit of the holidays. (I wrote at shorter length about that a few days ago here.) Leyrer writes:

At one time, the seasonal arrival of toys was a careful decision made by small businesses. Because these shops were often housed in humble downtown buildings, they didn’t have the shelf space to keep toys all year. These small shops would go out of their way to get into the spirit of Christmas and give customers a truly inspired experience that made shopping feel special.

There’s a lot more in this vein, and it’s excellent stuff. It underscores a point I make over and over again here: there’s nothing “un-American” about alternatives to low-density sprawl. The fact that uber-American pop culture from the postwar years is full of small-town imagery should make that very clear.

Keeping Christmas, The Lamp, Maclin Horton, December 17, 2021

“To keep Christmas” was one of those little kernels of Englishness that I liked. I don’t recall ever finding it in actual use in the United States. It carries a threefold suggestion: to observe and to respect, as in “to keep the Sabbath;” to retain possession, as in “to keep the change;” to continue, as in “to keep on keepin’ on.”

This one is a short, engaging, and non-puritanical reflection on the loss of the Christmas season’s quieter and spookier side, subsumed into consumerism and forced jolliness.

Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone is Out Now, The Verge, Mariya Abdulkaf and Dieter Bohn, December 7, 2021

This is fun if you have an interest in old technology, especially things which had a decent shot at huge success but just didn’t make it. This device from 2002 is basically a Palm Pilot handheld computer/organizer with a phone built in. If you think of it in terms of evolution, these folks evolved the smartphone out of the handheld computer. That’s interesting, because while the iPhone was a far more advanced device, it’s basically the case that smartphones have always been portable computers with phones, rather than phones with internet and touchscreens.

How the Fossil Fuel Industry Convinced Americans to Love Gas Stoves, Mother Jones, Rebecca Leber, June 17, 2021

I read this awhile ago, but with New York City banning natural gas in new buildings, I thought of it again. One of the first social issues I remember caring about was advertising and consumerism, so I’m usually pretty receptive to pieces like this. But I also like my gas stove, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen advertising for natural gas in general or gas stoves in particular. (Leber cites the ad campaign slogan “now you’re cooking with gas!” My mother used to use this an an expression, and it never, ever occurred to me that it was a reference to gas stoves to actual cooking.)

It’s also winter, and electric heat in New England the northern Midwest is very expensive. It seems to me there may be a bit of a regional thing going on here. As someone who cooks every day, I also find electric stoves to be almost impossible to use. The article is a good read for how it exposes corporate influence, but I can’t say my preferences were ever influenced by it either.

Related Reading:

New and Old #33

New and Old #34

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