The Monthly Salon: December

Plus some other bits and pieces

Hello everyone. This is our last Salon before Christmas and my last post at the Abbey in 2024. I’ll be back next year with various offerings, including the beginning of my new weekly series The Sunday Pilgrimage.

As has become customary each December, I am accompanying my Christmas post with a beautiful rendition of an English carol, sung by the nuns at my local Orthodox monastery here in Ireland. It warms my heart every Advent.

Before we get going on the conversation - or, rather, before you do - here are a few things of note:

• First Things magazine has just published the full text of my recent lecture Against Christian Civilisation. You can also listen to it here and watch it here. Editor Rusty Reno has written his own response and introduction here.

• Freshly up on my YouTube channel is a very recent podcast chat between me and the author Kyriakos Markides, author of The Mountain of Silence, one of my very favourite books on Orthodox mysticism and spirituality.

• You can also watch a funky new video of my recent talk in Alabama on Christian resistance to the Machine.

• I was recently interviewed by author and professor Jason Baxter, one of my hosts on my recent US tour. We talked about my work, past and future. I recommend a tour of Jason’s new Substack Beauty Matters, which defends not only beauty but other old-fashioned things like art, literature and truth.

Finally I should probably mention that, if you are stuck for late Christmas gift ideas, it is simple and easy to give a gift subscription to the Abbey of Misrule to anyone you love - or, indeed, really hate. You just have to click this button:

With that, readers, I hand the floor over to you, to talk about anything you like. It only remains for me to say how much I’ve valued and appreciated your support, readership and comments over the year. I hope you have a great Christmas and New Year.

Paul