Bless the baby. Bless us all.

It’s Christmas morning, early, and today’s 30-Second Read remains unwritten.

That’s perhaps due to a lack of discipline. We publish every second day, so the calendar has beckoned for weeks. I wrote last year’s Christmas essay days before, which now seems a rebuke.

But a want of discipline? No. I’ve pondered for hours – on daily walks, during the long holiday drive, at night when sleep has gone.

Golly, I seldom don’t have something. I’ve long viewed writing as more discipline than magic – the child of effort, not of inspiration.

Last Christmas, at the end of a grim year, I wrote about the day as anticipation. The virus gripped us, but vaccinations were at hand. Our release was near.

I reread that column just now. So, so naïve. Dammit.

It’s down to this runt of a thought. A baby is the perfect vessel for all that we think of as Christmas – cute, non-threatening, a remonstrance against our individual mortality, and the most tangible embodiment of a future we can otherwise only guess at.

Bless the baby. Bless us all.

Merry Christmas.