With that said, our seasonal holiday traditions are a bit different than everyone else's. But that's part of what used to make America so great. That melting pot of people from all over the world where immigrants could come and enjoy a certain measure of freedoms that weren't granted to them in the countries they came from, bringing their cultural traditions with them.

We even advertised that decades ago. Some of you may even remember that old ad slogan, which is written on a plaque inside the statue of liberty in New York harbour. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free"

It appears that we no longer want people to remember that anymore. It didn't start with Trump, but he's amplified this message beyond the pale in the last eleven plus months. The tired, poor and huddled masses are no longer welcome in the melting pot of the United States.

Which is why I'm constantly on alert as we try to live our normal lives these days. Every day I worry that ICE is going to show up at my door or surround our car with their large SUV's when we're out shopping and try to arrest my immigrant wife for deportation.

One of our elderly friends went to hospital three weeks ago and is in a bad way. She is a very elderly Chinese woman and she has two adult children still living in China. The son supposedly has a visa but as I was telling my wife this morning, with this current regime, that visa may be worthless now.

So the question asked of me this morning, if the adult children made it past the customs and border patrol at the airport without being detained, where would they stay long enough to visit their very ill mother?

I was interrupted before answering that question. We went out on this Christmas morning to take a friend over to the hospital in downtown Richmond, VA to see this terminally ill friend. And that is exactly what it is. Our friend is dying. We found out that she had a massive stroke that paralysed half her body and she isn't expected to live much longer. She's been in hospital for the last three weeks and we're just finding out about it.

The cruel part is this patriarchal society we live in where the law says the husband, as long as the doctors deem him sound of mind, make life and death decisions regarding their wives. And in the case of our friend, her husband took her off life support and told the doctors to let her die. Which may rob her children in China the opportunity to say their last goodbye's.

My wife and our other friend, the one we took to the hospital to visit our friend this morning, are very distraught over this. They don't understand how Americans can be so cruel to one another. My wife asked me about this man's decision not to save his wife of many, many years on the way home, and that's when I explained about these patriarchal laws dating back to the Puritans here in the U.S.

Between all of the massive, and aggressive, immigration enforcement happening around the country, with the blatant racial profiling, the fear of being caught up just because they aren't native born Americans with white skin, and learning about the impending death of a dear friend, our Christmas is pretty sad this year.

I asked my wife if we shouldn't invite our friends over for Christmas dinner and she said they're getting ready to fly to China next week so they don't have time.

To give you all a little background, our friends are a mixed couple in their mid seventies. He is from England and she is from China. They're both naturalised citizens of the U.S. but they too are worried about the U.S. immigration enforcement happening all around us. My wife told me a while back that they were thinking of moving back to China at one point.

With the news about one of our friends dying, and the news of the other leaving for China next week for a month, our Christmas is not as happy as we would like it to be.

I've had much worse holiday seasons in the past, like being deployed overseas to war zones and other things, but my wife has never had to go through any of this before. When she immigrated to the U.S. in 2010 with her daughter, the United States was a much better place to live. And it has been pleasant for her for the most part until this year. Up until Trump came to power, the United States was that welcoming country that took in the oppressed and the poor, as long as they tried to immigrate lawfully. She accepted those that wanted to live a life without the cruelties of authoritarian governments, if they could make it to her shores.

That's all changed now. Seeing an ICE raid next door last week, and this news about patriarchal laws allowing her friend to die without her children being present is making her rethink what she has always thought of America. She still thinks the U.S. is better than Communist China but now, she's thinking that maybe there isn't so much difference anymore. The U.S. just has a different type of government corruption. The results are much the same for the people who aren't morbidly wealthy in either country. They remain poor and oppressed, no matter which side of the Pacific Ocean they live on.

As I reflect on this Christmas season of 2025 after all of this, I ask myself once again today. Something I've been asking myself off and on for the last few weeks. What do I think 2026 is going to look like?

I think, based on everything I read or watch in the news from around the world, that the western world, especially the U.S., is headed for an economic crash of epic proportions. Along the lines of what happened in 2008. All of the signs are there.

If the U.S. gets sanctioned because of their war crimes over Venezuela, such as high seas piracy of oil and ships, and committing extra-judicial murder of civilians in international waters in the Caribbean and off the east Pacific coast of the Americas, or worse yet, they get boxed out of trade deals because of this aggressive war like action and the tariff wars, the standard of living for ordinary Americans will skyrocket and there will be shortages. Such as gasoline and food.

Trump keeps telling the world that the U.S. has plenty of its own oil and it doesn't need to import any. That's a lie. Yes, the U.S. does have a lot of oil reserves but the oil patches in the country aren't the kind to make a lot of gasoline with, along with other products.

How many people reading this are old enough to remember the oil embargoes of the late 1970's under Jimmy Carter? Or the oil price spikes back in 2008 through 2010? If Trump were to learn anything from U.S. history, the quickest way to end a presidency is to make the price of gas spike up to $5.00 a gallon or more. Trump's popularity is already at historical lows. What would happen if the price of gas goes up more that two dollars a gallon from where it is today?

Affordability is foremost on everyone's mind these days and this would be the last nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy. We would enter a major recession, way beyond the one we're in right now.

That's what I foresee in America's 2026 future. Food prices spiking more than they are now, with shortages because the agriculture industry is tanking hard due to the tariffs. Trump wants to renegotiate the current free trade deal he signed during his first presidency because he thinks that the U.S. is being taken advantage of, especially by Canada. That contract is coming up for renewal soon.

If Trump continues to highjack oil tankers and steal the ships and oil, other countries will stop sailing their oil tankers near America's shores out of fear of being boarded and taken. This will put the economies of neighbouring countries in Latin America into a tailspin as their oil imports will cease.

By all accounts, the U.S. economy is already on the ropes and it's only going to get worse under the current policies. If Trump does decide to put boots on the ground in Latin America in 2026, then all bets are off. Investors will leave the U.S. stock markets and trade will dwindle massively.

Unless someone can curb Trump's avarice, the U.S. is headed for a fall in 2026. By next Christmas season, we all may be wishing for a scene like the image I picked out for today's message. I'm afraid it will look more like a scene out of some dystopian future of mass poverty and long food lines by the end of 2026.

Despite all of this doom and gloom, I want to wish anyone reading this a prosperous New Year anyway. All we can do is take care of one another as things fall down around us. Give everyone in your family a hug this Christmas as they come to dinner, if that's a thing. If not, give your significant other a hug and toast to happier times. That's what I'm doing today. Giving my newly Christian wife a hug and telling her that things will be okay.