Thoughts on Coming Home; Faith, Loss,
and Belonging
Posted By: Boomer in the Basement, 12/24/2025 5:56:21 PM
Written on Christmas Eve, 2025. A personal reflection on faith, loss, ancestry, and finding my way home. This Christmas, life is really different for me. Since September, I’ve been attending RCIA, or Catechism, with the aim of converting to Catholicism and joining the church. Presently, I’m about 40% of the way through, and to say it’s been eye-opening would be the boldest understatement I’ve ever made.
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Boomer in the Basement"
Written on Christmas Eve, 2025. A personal reflection on faith, loss, ancestry, and finding my way home. This Christmas, life is really different for me. Since September, I’ve been attending RCIA, or Catechism, with the aim of converting to Catholicism and joining the church. Presently, I’m about 40% of the way through, and to say it’s been eye-opening would be the boldest understatement I’ve ever made.
When I was a kid, my middle sister’s birthday was December 10th. As part of her celebration, the family went out to buy a live Christmas tree. Not because we were virtuous. Not because of tradition. Because that’s when the tree lots opened.
There were no pre-lit artificial trees waiting in plastic coffins in the attic. You didn’t unbox Christmas. You went outside and found it, standing upright in the cold, guarded by a man with twine and cold hands in a worn corduroy jacket.
Writing this in December as I am you might be tempted to think I’m something of a money-grubbing Scrooge, but let me assure you in this first sentence I’m nothing of the sort. In fact, when it comes to tipping good service, I’m renowned for being generous, and was going twenty percent years before it was standard.
My formula for a tip is this. When I enter an establishment, the wait staff is at twenty percent, perhaps even a little more. The tip is built into my tipping psyche. At that point, it’s up to the wait staff to begin working their way down.
Talk Radio Tuneout
23 replies
Now that we’re firmly in December, I can comfortably drive around in the truck with Jimmy Durante’s gravelly crooning of Frosty the Snowman for the eighteen-millionth time in my life, rather than tune into what passes for talk radio these days. To be sure, I’ll even turn up The Chipmunks—poor old Alvin being screamed at by Dave—before I switch over to the local AM station carrying Clay and Buck, or, God help me, Sean Hannity.
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
The Democratic Party’s principal fundraising committee saw donations slump in the second-to-last month of the year, recording just a $12 million campaign war chest and almost $16 million still in debt due to a loan taken out the previous month, Federal Election Commission filings show.
The fundraising doldrums come amid party infighting over whether to release a 2024 autopsy report on the failed Biden-Harris campaign and pressure ahead of the critical 2026 midterms, in which Democrats want to retake Congress.
The Democratic National Committee listed a little more than $12.6 million cash on hand, $10.7 million raised,
Biden shares perplexing family Christmas
photo with himself hidden in back: ‘Where’s Joe?’ 20 replies
photo with himself hidden in back: ‘Where’s Joe?’ 20 replies
WASHINGTON — For Christmas, former President Joe Biden gave everyone scrolling through X something to talk about by sharing a strange family photo — with himself hardly visible.
Biden, 83, shared the image of himself and seven members of his family around 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, writing: “Wishing you a peaceful and joyful Christmas Eve filled with love.”
Surprisingly, the gaffe-prone 46th president wasn’t front and center, as is common for family patriarchs. Instead, former first son Hunter Biden, who once used the Secret Service code name “Chieftain,” and his adult daughter Maisy occupy the prime location.
The ex-president’s own face is partially visible in a corner behind
The Trump administration is preparing to crack down on student loan defaulters starting next year. This will be interesting because you can bet Democrats are going to flip out about this. The Education Department confirmed it will begin withholding wages from borrowers who fail to pay their debts. The first wave hits in early January. About 1,000 individuals who defaulted on their student loans will see wage garnishments begin the week of Jan. 7, 2026.
“We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of January 7,” an Education Department spokesperson told The New York Post.
Even more surprising than the blockbuster 4.3% economic growth rate recorded in the third quarter of 2025 was the fact that some 90% of the nation’s professional economists got it all wrong.
These economic whiz-kids’ faulty forecast comes on the heels of their predictions last week that inflation was going to be above 3%. Instead, the actual number was 2.7%.
Welcome to the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Maybe it’s time for this cadre of Keynesian economists to send their PhDs back to the Ivy League schools they got them from, and just admit they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Politico is framing the celebration of Christmas as a “far-right” front in Europe, arguing that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her party have made it a “spectacle.”
Conservative social media users blasted the left-wing outlet’s Wednesday article, “How the far right stole Christmas,” authored by Rome correspondent Hannah Roberts.
“Not a ‘far right’ concept.. politico is such a joke,” wrote podcast host Mel K: “Wow, imagine marking Christmas as being Christian. Revolutionary thinking in Europa,” wrote former Breitbart News journalist Chris Tomlinson: In the Christmas Eve piece, Roberts wrote that the holiday “is becoming a new front line in Europe’s culture wars,”
Islam And The West: Time For A Divorce
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Islam is simply incompatible with Western civilization, and that couldn’t be more evident considering the 2025 Christmas and Hanukkah season. We get it rubbed in our faces, time and time again, with one massacre after another. These aren’t just lone gunmen who go nuts. These are organized terrorism cells. Bondi Beach, a massacre allegedly committed by two Muslims (father and son), is only the latest example.
San Bernardino, California was the scene of a similar massacre by two Muslims (husband and wife). Nineteen Muslims, backed up by the wealth of other Muslims, gave us 9/11.
Only Islam commands its followers to “kill the infidels.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran is at war with the United States, and has been for a long time. Back in Nov. 2013, as negotiations continued toward what ultimately became Obama’s Iran nuke deal, Iranian political analyst Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini said: “We are engaged in a fierce war with the Americans on all levels.” That war continues to this day, and the mullahs who rule the Islamic Republic have just opened a new front.
IranWire reported Friday that “the Islamic Republic has launched what it calls a ‘hybrid warfare headquarters,’” and that this is a major operation, as the staff consists of over 40,000 Islamic seminary students.
In a tough blow for the Trump administration, the U.S. Supreme Court shot down a bid by President Trump to deploy the National Guard to Chicago. (snip) In its order the majority claimed that, "At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois." It further argued that Trump "has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act," and that, "Instead he relies on inherent constitutional authority that (snip) allows him to use the military to protect federal personnel and property."
Mayor Karen Bass and her DEI hires at the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) were caught red-handed covering up their and the state's response to the deadly and devastating Palisades Fire by changing or erasing the records in the city's official after-action report. The deletions and distortions were so severe that the author of the after-action report requested that his name be removed from the publication.
The cover-up and retconning of the report, however, will never cover up the 12 deaths, thousands of lives upended, billions lost, and thousands of homes and businesses wiped out by that Palisades firestorm on Jan. 7, 2025.
Bass's office and
For as long as anyone can remember, Americans have been told the same number over and over again. Eleven million illegal immigrants have taken up “space” in the USA. That’s the figure we’ve heard for what seems like decades now, like it’s carved in stone or something.
But it’s just not adding up. It seems like that number didn’t budge much through waves of border surges. It feels like we’ve been told eleven million for a really long time, and quite frankly, a lot of people don’t buy it anymore.
H-E-B Grocers' Computers Fail, So They
Take an Opportunity to Spread Unexpected
Christmas Cheer 14 replies
Take an Opportunity to Spread Unexpected
Christmas Cheer 14 replies
Consider this a Feel-Good Wednesday story in honor of Christmas Eve, and a testament to a private enterprise that honors and appreciates its customers.
H-E-B is a regional grocery chain headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. In 2025, H-E-B ranked the 5th-largest private company in the U.S. with annual revenues of $49.57 billion. Not too shabby for a concern that only covers parts of Texas and Mexico. This 120-year-old grocer has obviously tapped into their market and found success with their model, but this Christmas, they also tapped into the heart of service in a big way.
On Tuesday, at an H-E-B location in Burleson, TX, the computer system went completely down;
After Raffensperger Downplays 2020 Election
Errors, Republicans Call For Federal Investigation 14 replies
Errors, Republicans Call For Federal Investigation 14 replies
The tabulation tapes in question included 315,000 votes -- exponentially more than the 11,780 votes mentioned by President Trump in his fateful phone call to Raffensperger in January, 2021. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's downplaying of a 2020 election blunder as a mere "clerical error" has done little to quiet a growing backlash within his own party. Far from accepting Raffensperger's explanation that Fulton County's failure to properly sign tabulation tapes "does not erase valid, legal votes," 2020 election skeptics are calling for a federal investigation into what they view as a massive coverup. One state senator called for arrests and charges of treason.