Hitchens essays: And Yet (2015)

     And Yet... (2015) Posthumous collection of essays, mostly from periodicals such as Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, etc. His book reviews are thorough and sometimes occasions for polemics. His polemics are always interesting. He was a libertarian who detested totalitarianism, including religion. He became an American citizen late in life, and immediately began digging into the history that is glossed over by the myths. He tried to be honest and rational; one of his heroes was Orwell, because Orwell tried to be as truthful as humanly possible.
     Picking any one essay as an example won’t do Hitchens justice, but here goes: Bah, Humbug attacks Christmas, not because it’s religious but because the relentless urging to buy gifts promotes hypocrisy. The holiday instills guilt: if you don’t lavish gifts upon your nearest and dearest, you obviously don’t love them. Along the way Hitchens reminds us that, as soon as Cromwell’s victories gave them the power, the Puritans banned Christmas in England. It was a pagan feast, not a Christian one. Thus those who wish to “keep the Christ in Christmas” betray both their historical and theological ignorance. In any case, what we now think of as time-honoured Christmas traditions were invented wholesale by the Victorians. Prince Albert and Dickens have a lot to answer for.
     Beware: if you start reading, you will want to read the next essay and the next and the next, and before you know it, you’ve spent a hour or so immersed in this book. ***