Christmas and Eternal Hope

Jonathan Clarke offers his personal reminiscences of Christmas—from childhood holidays spent with grandparents in Florida to the official beginning of the season in his household today: the Army–Navy football game, held on the second Saturday every December. In these memories, he sees Christmas as a season of hope amid the cold and dark of winter.

“Christmas can be especially difficult if we are facing illness, divorce, or financial hardship. The season’s jollity taunts and rebukes us,” he writes. “And yet hope, whether it be for eternal salvation or something nearer to hand, must be embraced. We are an optimistic people. That is our signature strength.”

In writing “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens clearly wanted to make an impact on wealthy businessmen who were indifferent to the plight of the poor. And while he helped popularize philanthropy during the Christmas season, poverty remains with us.

“We still have Scrooges this holiday season,” John Tierney writes, “and the wealthiest of them—George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Tom Steyer—have inflicted far more suffering on the poor than Scrooge ever did to Bob Cratchit and the working class of his day.”

Today’s Scrooges may seem nothing like the original, given their extensive philanthropy and acknowledgement of their responsibility to help the poor. “Yet they, too, have callously ignored the travails of the less fortunate, and they, too, have rationalized their indifference by seizing on dubious theories,” Tierney argues.

Read his take.

Opened in 1959, Stonewall Jackson High School in Virginia, like many Southern schools back then, adopted the name of a Confederate general. “Whatever its founders’ intentions, the school’s name took on different meanings to students and the local community,” John Hirschauer writes. “Some considered it racist and an affront to blacks. Others argued that Jackson was a ‘Godly’ man, whose name was essential to the community’s identity.”

In 2020, Shenandoah County School Board members voted to remove Jackson’s name from the school. But beginning the following year, the town elected new board members—who later voted, in 2024, to reinstate the original name.

It took only a month before two black student-athletes, along with the state NAACP chapter, sued the school board, arguing that the name violated their First Amendment rights against compelled speech. The judge agreed.

Read more about the controversy, and why the court’s logic doesn’t add up.

The Manhattan Institute is proud to serve as the Principal Institutional Partner for the Sun Valley Policy Forum’s 2026 Winter Summit in the iconic resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho on February 11, 2026.

We are thrilled to join Joe Lonsdale and MI senior fellow Christopher F. Rufo for an evening on principled leadership and the future of American institutions in an AI-driven era. Please click here to learn more about the Sun Valley Policy Forum and our partnership and to purchase tickets at a discounted rate for friends of the Manhattan Institute.

A former NYPD captain, Eric Adams became New York City mayor by seizing the centrist lane in the 2021 Democratic primary. He was elected to bring down crime, and under his mayoralty, murders and shootings did fall. In the days after October 7, 2023, he stood firm in his defense of Jews and Israel. He spoke out against the migrant influx that put pressure on the city’s budget. And he signed a zoning-reform package that sought to create 80,000 housing units over the next 15 years.

But his successes weren’t enough to keep him in office. Major felony offenses remain well above pre-pandemic levels. His fiscal 2026 budget totaled $115.1 billion—the city’s largest ever. The city’s economy was stagnant. And Joe Biden’s Justice Department announced a five-count indictment against Adams for bribery charges.

“Adams became the first incumbent Democratic mayor of New York not to win his primary since Ed Koch in 1989,” Tevi Troy writes. “At this point, he seems likely to be best remembered as Mamdani’s predecessor. That would be a sobering legacy for a leader who, with better decision-making, might have proved a serviceable two-term mayor of New York.”

Read more about Adams’s tenure.

As 2025 comes to a close, the City Journal Podcast revisits some of its best conversations from the past few months. From discussing Sydney Sweeney’s “jeans” to analyzing Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s mayoral race, this compilation episode brings together some of our most thought-provoking moments.

“Something else about the South: the children still call adults ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ and are taught and expected to be polite. Church is a big thing, too.”

Photo credit: Stephanie Keith / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images