| It's immodestly hot, and the thought of August still towering over us has many ready to crawl out of our overheated homes and/or skins. So how about a break from regularly scheduled programming to steal away to Christmas in July? After all, as Kathleen Parker wrote in a 2021 column on why the holidays remain the best, "Christmas isn't a certain set of circumstances. It is a state of mind." So the long days of summer ought to make it even easier to enter that bright-shining space and don the virtues that come with it. They are, if you will, the gifts that keep on giving. The since-deceased Michael Gerson wrote pretty much annually (alas, in December) on these virtues. His final holiday column, drafted as he was dying, is an unblinking tribute to hope. But the one from 2018 — on hope's cousin, courage — is just as good. Michael presented courage as the antidote to anxiety, "the defining emotion of our time." Mary, mother of Jesus, had maybe more cause for anxiety than any other human in recorded history, but she forged through confusion, if not with optimism — "urging someone to be more optimistic is like urging someone to have higher cheekbones or bluer eyes," Michael wrote — then with confidence. Along with courage comes kindness. Recall the arrival of thousands of Afghans to the United States in 2021, lost and "tempest-tost" after the fall of their country, the Editorial Board wrote. The board invoked the Christmas spirit that winter to call Americans to their "innate generosity" to make a home for their new neighbors. Post reporting around the same time showed an America very up to the task. Christmas wasn't a part of most of these Afghans' tradition, nor is it for Benjamin Dreyer. But Dickens is. The season for him, even more than courage or kindness, is about the "Carol." | 
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