Alan Bickley: 2025 Christmas Message

At home in Deal, Alan Bickley, dressed in twinset and pearls, sits with a Christmas tree in the background.

At this time of year, few sights evoke feelings of cheer, continuity, and quiet reassurance more powerfully than the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree. Year after year, they remind us that even when the world appears unsettled, there remain customs and affections that bind us together across generations.

For myself, the tree behind me carries me back not only to Christmases past, but to the long rhythms of family life. I think, as I so often do, of Christmas 1993, when my wife and I had been married for almost a year. It was our first Christmas together as a couple, and the first at which she prepared the traditional mushroom soup and fried carp of a Slovak Christmas feast. It was a meal unfamiliar to me then, but one that quickly became part of the fabric of our family life.

We have enjoyed such feasts almost every year since. This year, however, family circumstances have intervened. Our daughter’s resolute aversion to fish has finally persuaded my wife to replace carp with chicken fried in breadcrumbs. A small change, perhaps, but one that illustrates something larger: that traditions endure not by remaining frozen in time, but by adapting gently to the needs of those we love.

And in many ways, that is what 2025 has been about. For decades we were assured—sometimes insistently—that there was only one direction in which our country could travel, and that deviation from it would bring chaos and regret. Yet recent years have shown that history rarely conforms to managerial certainty. The world since Brexit has not collapsed into darkness, nor has it transformed overnight into a promised land. Instead, it has resumed what history has always been: an untidy process of adjustment, argument, and gradual change.

Across the Atlantic, too, events have reminded us how often expectations confound prediction. The second Trump presidency, now well under way, continues to unsettle those who believed such an outcome impossible or illegitimate. Whether welcomed or feared, it stands as another reminder that popular politics has not yet been fully domesticated by elites, and that democracy retains an inconvenient habit of producing surprises.

Yet life is never lived only at the level of grand events. It is also shaped by journeys, friendships, and moments of shared hospitality. Earlier this year, I visited Slovakia with my wife and daughter, where we were welcomed with warmth and generosity by friends both old and new. Wherever we went, we encountered a goodwill that transcended politics and nationality, and reminded us that the bonds between ordinary people are often stronger than the divisions proclaimed in their name.

The same was true when, later in the year, I travelled without my family to Turkey to see our good friends Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Gulcin Imre. Though the country faces its own difficulties and uncertainties, the gathering of friends from many lands once again turned concern into conviviality, and anxiety into something more hopeful. It is remarkable how often good company succeeds where grand plans fail.

Christmas also invites us to think especially of those who cannot be with us. At this time of year, absence is felt more keenly, and memory speaks more loudly. I think particularly of Dr Gabb, now largely confined to his care home for the criminally insane in Herne Bay. Though his circumstances prevent him from joining us freely, his ingenuity remains undimmed. Only a few weeks ago, by feigning another stroke, he succeeded in attending the sitting for the Libertarian Alliance group portrait. Regrettably, his dramatic escape from the ambulance taxed his waning strength, and he was obliged to remain seated throughout the sitting. Even so, it was a comfort to know that he was present in spirit, if not entirely in mind or body.

As we gather around the tree, we are encouraged to look both backwards and forwards: to reflect on the year that has passed, and to consider the year that lies ahead. Change will continue, as it always has, and not all of it will be welcome or easily borne. Yet Christmas reminds us that renewal does not begin with power or certainty, but with humility.

The custom of placing a star or angel atop the tree recalls the very first Christmas, when it was an angel who announced the coming of a better world. For Joseph and Mary, the circumstances of Christ’s birth were far from ideal. Yet it was from that unpromising beginning that a message emerged which has outlasted empires: a reminder that while Caesar may demand much, there are limits to what rightly belongs to him.

This is not an easy lesson to follow, and it never has been. But Christmas encourages us not to despair of it. Instead, it invites us to be thankful for those who bring love, loyalty, and laughter into our lives, and to seek—quietly and persistently—to extend that generosity to others, wherever we are able.

Christmas is a time to give thanks for these things, and for all that brings light into our lives.

I wish you a very happy Christmas.

Fade to the refrain from Land of Hope and Glory.