You are the presents under my tree
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Merry Christmas from the Reynolds/Smith household!
Helen, of course, is Jewish, but she has fully embraced Christmas too. We’ve traditionally observed both Christmas and Hanukkah in our household.
But for me Christmas is kind of the wrapup time of the year. Yeah, there’s that sort of no-man’s-land week until New Year’s where, as the famous cartoon says, everyone is “confused, uncertain what day it is, full of cheese.” But already today — on Christmas Eve! — I’m getting emails from my law school administration telling me to post my syllabi for next semester on the portal. So 2026 is is barreling down the pike.
2025 has been a very good year for the country, but a mixed bag for me personally, as illustrated by the fact that my family isn’t really having Christmas this year. My mother is in a rehab hospital, and will be placed in memory care in a few days. (What did I do for Christmas Eve? Go to Home Depot and have new slats cut for her bed — the old ones were falling out, not safe for an 86 year old woman with two bad hips — and related errands.) My sister usually hosts Christmas, but her household has been hit hard by norovirus so . . . no. My daughter is off on a long, fun international trip with her in-laws. So Helen and I are off to shack up in a fancy out-of-town hotel and eat Christmas Dinner there. I’m not unhappy about that — I’m never unhappy about shacking up in a hotel with the Insta-Wife — but it’s nothing like, well, all the Christmases in my life to date.
But hey, things change. To everything there is a season, yada yada yada. Truer words have seldom been spoken. We’ll roll with the punches and be thankful that shacking up in a luxury hotel is our fate.
Meanwhile, I just want to say that I’m thankful for all of you InstaPundit and Substack readers. Even though most of you are, in a sense, just disembodied words on screens to me, in another sense you’re also much more than that. There have been times when the blog, and you readers, have been important anchors in tough times of my life. Thank you for that gift.
First published in Glenn’s substack
