A domestic dictator and an international anarchist. This is how I would describe Donald Trump on this last day of 2025.

Now, let’s move on to something else. Tomorrow, New Year’s Day, ends the Halloween-Hanukkah-Christmas-New Year’s Day holiday season that has disrupted our regular schedules over the past two months. I remember this season as it has appeared to me over the years, and I think it has changed. Maybe it is I who have changed as the years have gone by (I obviously have), but it seems to me more than that. And maybe it’s because where I live, but I have lived in DC now for 56 years, and in the same house for 43.

Let’s start with Halloween. Yes, children still dress up in costume and go door to door and collect candy, but we used to get cookies and candy apples and now everything has to be prepackaged. And a lot of kids used to collect money for UNICEF on Halloween. That doesn’t happen any more.

When I was in junior high and high school, when we were too old to go door to door, it was still a social night. I remember roaming around with a group of kids. We never got into much trouble, although we sure had a lot of ideas how to, and it always ended with a party of some sort. Maybe people still have Halloween parties, but I haven’t heard of any for ages. Instead now, people decorate their houses and lawns extensively with gravestones and blown up creatures and skeletons and all sorts of things. No one did that back then.

And it seems that Christmas lights and decorations are now less prominent than they used to be, and the decorations, if not the lights, are much more elaborate on Halloween. I still see a large number of fancy Christmas trees through windows, so maybe home celebrations haven’t changed much, but where are the municipal decorations, the Christmas trees in front of churches and schools, the stores with their welcoming trees and greenery, the big store window displays, the store Santas? They aren’t there in the same numbers, are they?

And New Year’s Eve! We decided to stay home on New Year’s Eve decades ago, but has everyone else decided that, too? New Year’s Eve used to be a big night. “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” was a standard question. Certainly, no one asked me that this year

All the restaurants had big New Year celebrations. Special menus (elaborate and expensive), champagne, party hats, noisemakers, and so forth. They advertised their celebrations for weeks. Does that still happen anywhere?

I am not saying the changes are good or bad. Just that there seem to be changes.

2025 was a terrible year for much of the world. It was a terrible year for many in this country, and for this country in general. Sadly, there seems to be no reason for 2026 to be any better. But hope, as the say, springs eternal. So, let us hope. Happy New Year.