Last year, I called 2023 “The year of the blackpill” — a grim but defensibly grim assessment of a year of national decline and international conflict. Looking back over 2024, on the other hand, it is obvious that it has been … a year of national decline and international conflict.

Damn.

Still, it would be lazy to wallow in negativism. Yes, there is much to feel miserable about. Britain is sinking into economic and institutional decay. Terrorism is scarring Europe. Ukraine is on the back foot. Gaza is in ruins. (To be clear, I do appreciate that crises such as those in Ukraine and Palestine are much, much worse for people who have to experience them. But they are also grim to observe.)

Yet we should also appreciate what is cheering — even if, or perhaps especially if, we are inclined towards gloominess. One does not have to be a complacent Pinkerite to think that there is much about the world that is good. Human beings are always progressing and regressing. Our progress is impermanent, and never perfect, but that does not make it bogus.

So, what is there to celebrate?

Science has brought — or seems to have brought — cheering news in the field of medicine. We appear to be improving our ability to diagnose dementia (which could make it easier to manage). An antipsychotic drug has been approved which could provide a major breakthrough in the treatment of schizophrenia. Such advances are too tentative for unqualified celebration, but Saloni Dattani puts them in the context of a happy trend:

Annual death rates from various conditions, including cancers, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, have declined greatly over the long-run and advances in cancer therapy, cardiovascular medication, antibiotics and vaccines are just a few of the many reasons why. 

I’ll drink to that (any progress on liver disease?).

In the domain of engineering, meanwhile, SpaceX managed to launch its Starship rocket and then catch the booster in metal arms. This, in Elon Musk’s words, represents a major step towards “making life multiplanetary”. Some of us might have doubts concerning the spiritual significance of this ambition but it would be downright misanthropic not to appreciate the scientific genius behind it.

For the average reader of The Critic — and apologies if you are not that average reader — there have been cheering political developments. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, it would have been difficult not to enjoy Kamala Harris’s managerial progressivism being decisively rejected at the ballot box. Frankly, it would have been difficult not to enjoy the Tories being demolished as well — they deserved it after all. Equally, it has been gratifying to watch Keir Starmer’s popularity collapse. (Yes, 2024 has been a fine year for we none of the aboves.)

European governments — such as those in Sweden and Italy — appear to be more open to a decisive change of course on immigration. Measures like Britain’s ban on puberty blockers for kids represent more sanity on gender issues. None of this is cause for wild jubilation, of course. But one can raise a cheer without being complacent.

Yet we should not look to politics, of all things, for cause for good cheer on Christmas Day. Someone whose happiness depended on the news would be miserable indeed.

The believers among us — as Laudable Practice so eloquently writes today — can find the same joy in faith that a believer might have found a thousand years ago and that a believer might find a thousand years into the future:

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare —

That God was man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Those of us who are agnostics and atheists can marvel at the world as well — at the sheer improbability of the sun spreading its warmth across a chilly world, and the frail bird sending its forceful music through the air, and the crunch of the snow (well, perhaps next year). We are fortunate to have the luxury of being able to enjoy such things in peace, of course, but that only means that we really have no excuse not to appreciate them.

We have the people we love, and whose company — more than the presents, and the food, and the TV repeats — will make this holiday pleasurable. If you don’t have such people, and would like to have them, then we hope they will be found.

Because we are grateful for you. We are grateful for our writers, who make The Critic what it is, and for our readers, who give it a reason to exist. 

We hope you all have a very happy Christmas.