1. A blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception!

2. This is, of course, the national feast day of the United States, as instituted in 1846 by the US Bishops and confirmed by Pius IX. This seems primarily based, historically, on the fact that Christopher Columbus’s flagship was the Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción, and more generally on a ‘pious desire’ by Catholics of the time to express their devotion to the Virgin Mary (I have heard a rumor that the Blessed Mother herself requested it, but haven’t been able to track down a source for that, and the only approved Marian apparition in the US is Our Lady of Champion, which took place in 1859).

3. On another note, it is a shame and a scandal that American Catholics don’t make more of this feast. We don’t even have any distinctive customs for it that I know of and most Catholics miss it entirely. This seems to me rather emblematic of American Catholicism, in that we generally don’t strive to make ourselves conspicuous. Our main goal, historically, has been to prove that we are just as much patriotic and loyal Americans as anyone else, with evangelization a distant second goal at best (not always and not everyone, of course, but generally speaking). It’s been so ever since Fr. Carroll traveled all the way to Quebec and back with Benjamin Franklin and didn’t consider it worth discussing religion once (even though it was very much a question whether the elderly Franklin would make it through alive and thus would seem a good chance to at least try to save the old sinner’s soul. But I digress).

It is rather fitting then that the Divine Plan should call for this most Catholic of titles to be the name under which our country is placed. Almost as if Our Lady is reminding us that we have a duty to stand out in our country if we’re going to do it any good.

4. I was reading The Hapsburg Way by Archduke Eduard Hapsburg, which is highly entertaining as a summary look at the family history as well as giving some solid popular-style advice on life. My favorite is a line from Otto von Hapsburg:

“Those who don’t know where they come from do not know where they are heading – because they don’t know where they stand.”

This should be engraved in every history classroom and inscribed in every history book.

5. There are also quite a few entertaining family anecdotes, including one where a surly peasant complains about Emperor Rudolf I and his giant nose blocking his way, and one where Joseph II plays a guessing game with a stranded traveler he picked up (The traveler’s question was “Guess what I had for breakfast;” the Emperor’s was “Guess who I am”. Both finished up by jocularly slapping the other’s leg).

Humility is one of God’s favorite virtues, and it never shows up so brightly as against a background of greatness (hence how Christ is the supreme example, as no one else can descend from such heights). It doesn’t consist, as some think, of dispensing with honors or titles, but rather in holding them with a certain lightness. It is a matter of an eagle addressing a jack-draw on his own terms, not of him dressing up in jack-draw feathers and pretending not to be an eagle.

This is one of the things we lose when we try to dispense with hierarchies: the opportunity for the great to exercise and display humility (which indeed is a mark of true greatness). Of course, since men are often better than their principles, we manage to show it anyway – e.g. John D. Rockefeller passing out the collection plate at his modest Baptist church every week – but there’s not quite the same impact. I think we tend to feel that it is only right that a millionaire should consider himself no grander than his neighbor. In an egalitarian society, he who shows humility can only say “I am an unprofitable servant who has done no more than what is expected of him.” An Emperor submitting to a peasant’s joke or picking up a painter’s brush is not to be expected and thus is received with greater appreciation.

6. I was rather depressed to find that my history students didn’t know the date of Pearl Harbor. Though I suppose the rising generation is much less aware of World War II than mine was. It was still living memory when I was growing up, and very much talked about. Now it’s rapidly fading over the horizon into the swirl of general ‘history’.

I might try to compile a list of dates every American ought to know, just to give people a framework for remembering where they come from.

7. I think this will be the year marked down in cinema history as the year the bloated Hollywood blockbuster died an undignified death. How many monster-budgeted tent-pole films have we had struggle or else absolutely crater at the box-office? Ant-Man 3, Blue Beetle, The Flash, Indiana Jones 5, The Little Mermaid, Shazam 2, Peter Pan and Wendy, Transformers, Elemental, Haunted Mansion, Mission Impossible 7, and now finally The Marvels, which is tracking for a staggeringly bad performance. And those are just the ones I know for certain under performed or straight-up bombed.

Meanwhile, you had two low-budget sleeper hits succeeding almost entirely through word of mouth: Sound of Freedom, which is an independent film that cost less than $15 million dollars, sat in a vault for several years, was disliked by mainstream critics, and had an extremely slow build up only to come away with nearly $250 million at the box office. And now, at the end of the year, Godzilla: Minus One, also budgeted at $15 million (which amazes me), is garnering more and more attention as what was intended as a limited run is being extended and expanded thanks, again, to stellar word of mouth.

I think we’re on the cusp of a 1969-style revolution in the film industry, where smaller-budgeted, but well-written and audience-resonating films will increasingly take the place of oversized studio flicks.

Took them long enough.