From Bethlehem to Palm Springs, Christmas Belongs in the Desert

During the Holiday Season, Southern California’s Coachella Valley Becomes a Place of Rebirth

If you’re looking for the quintessential Christmas experience, there’s only one place you should go: the Southern California desert.

The Coachella Valley is the Golden State’s very own Yuletide capital—which might make it the capital of Christmas in America, maybe even the world. After all, California popularized Christmas via Hollywood, and still designs it through our toymakers, digitizes it via Silicon Valley, and distributes it through our ports.

Some Scrooges will call this sacrilege, citing our lack of conifers and snow. Leave such people to their ignorance—the desert is already …

All I Want For Christmas Is More Immigrants

California Needs Foreign Arrivals to Offset Dire Shortages of Workers and Students

Kris Kringle
Santa Claus Lane
Carpinteria, CA 93013

Dear Kris,

I hope you don’t mind me writing you at the California beach house address you slipped me when we met at that …

Where Does Santa Call Ho-Ho-Home?

Nordic Countries Are Battling to Claim the Legend's Address, but Maybe It's Better Not to Know

In my neighborhood, everyone gets a chance to live with Santa.

Östanfors, an old miners’ district in the town of Falun, Sweden, has a longstanding tradition of moving Old Saint …

How California Invented Christmas

The Modern Holiday Was Conceived and Popularized Under Swaying Palm Trees

Do the good citizens of New Orleans skip town during Mardi Gras? Do proper New Englanders take tropical cruises when their trees display their most glorious fall colors? Would New …

Christmas Is a Subversive Parable

The Tale of Refugees, Infanticide, and the Exaltation of a Humble Child Urges Us to Take Sides

The news out of the Middle East is relentlessly disheartening these days, but the other day I reread this amazing story from a while back about a child in the …