The smell of stock-distribution is as pungent as wood smoke these days, but you’ve got to give DaBoyz credit for levitating a million tons of swill while they work their special brand of magic and deception. Usually Wall Street is pushing the ‘Santa rally’ narrative hard at this time of year, always leavened by urgent speculation about how “green” Christmas will be.  But Santa obviously won’t be making the rounds in 2020, especially in department stores where his beard would become a superspreader to rival the hydrogen bomb in killing power. Definitely not the Kris Kringle of our childhood.

One holiday fixture that is certain to survive is endless TV showings of  It’s a Wonderful Life, the Jimmy Stewart classic with a conclusion that could bliss out Jack the Ripper. Not any more, though — not since, metaphorically speaking, financier George Soros suited up to replace the no longer believable banker, George Bailey. Will there be anything about 2020 to look back on with nostalgia?  If so, we are in for a very rough decade. A successful vaccine is everyone’s best hope at the moment for 2021, but few believe it will return things to normal.  For in fact, given the rancid political climate and the vast swaths of the economy that have been laid waste, most of us are finding it difficult to even imagine what “normal” might be. Something will sustain us in any event, but that old standby, bread and circuses, is going to ring hollower than ever.