Home for the Holidays, or Not: Minnesota, Land of Pink Tinsel and Doodads

Have you had a memorable holiday away from home? Tell us your stories in the comment space here. We'll post our favorites on IHT Rendezvous during these last weeks of 2012.

The first Christmas I spent away from home felt racy and liberating. After years of a traditional, big family Midwestern celebration with turkey, a huge tree and more presents than anyone needs, I found the humble carp dinner spent with a friend's parents on Christmas Eve in Lübeck, Germany - followed by a trip to the disco that lasted well into Christmas Day 1992- thrilling.

In the 20 years that have passed, I have spent many more holidays away from home, in Bosnia, Vienna and my current home, Berlin.

Over time, after my own children were born, I started to recreate some of what I remembered from my own childhood: the turkey, the tree, even the silly little gift s that had little use beyond the initial thrill of finding something ridiculous in your stocking that I once condemned as wasteful excess.

I reveled in the idea that our celebrations were more modest, more relaxing than the gala events back at home that would keep my mother up until well past midnight, wrapping the last presents, ironing napkins and spicing her signature apple punch to welcome the dozens relatives would fill our large house to capacity the following afternoon.

But I couldn't deny there was something lonely about our small celebrations. The few friends who could be rounded up on any given year were grateful, but lacked the energy and warmth that inquisitive aunts, uncles arguing politics and cousins buzzed on candy and comparing their haul.

After seven years of trying to make merry on my own, I can finally admit that I miss the over-the-top extravagance of my family's big Christmas.

This year, my kids and I are jumping a Christmas Eve flight back to Minnesota to be a part of the pink tinsel trees, the stockings stuffed with gizmos and doodads that might not last until the end of the day and the relatives who say good-bye at least twice before the finally make it out the door.

It will be exhausting and excessive. I can't wait.

How Was Your Doomsday?

LONDON - One of the most alarming things to have emerged from the hullabaloo over the so-called Mayan doomsday prophecy is how many people in the world actually believed it.

A poll earlier this year indicated 1 in 10 people feared the world would end on Friday. That included 1 in 5 Chinese and 1 in 8 Americans.

And we skeptical, rational Europeans have no reason to smirk. The Ipsos survey, carried out in March on behalf of Reuters, showed every 14th Briton and every 25th German also expected to disappear into the fiery furnace on Dec. 21.

Michael J. A. Wohil cited the poll in a Sunday Review column last weekend to examine the concept of “collective angst” and its powerful impact on group psychology.

Many concerned citizens have this week been on the phone to NASA, which took hundreds of calls from around the world from people said to be worried about the predictions and skeptical of science.

J.D. Harrington, a spokesman for the space agency, told the Houston Chronicle, “There are so many scenarios out there, we are trying to wrangle them all in and get the truth out.”

In Russia, as Ellen Barry reported at the start of the month, outbreaks of collective psychosis and panic buying linked to doomsday fears prompted authorities to issue official assurances that the world was not about to end.

Don't the doomsday believers have enough real problems to worry about without stressing over the prospect that humanity might disappear in a hail of fire and brimstone?

It w as a point made by Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, who lamented on Friday the persistence of anti-intellectualism and hysteria.

“What amazes me is that you can get people excited about dangers to their world by twisting some text from an ancient civilization,” he wrote on his blog. “But you can't get them worried about an actual set of threats that really do have the potential to threaten human existence.”

He said the real threats to the world included nuclear war, climate change, viral contagions and the energy crisis. The only remote extra-terrestrial threat was from a collision with an asteroid or comet.

Maybe someone would like to commission a poll to tell us how many people who do believe in the Apocalypse do not believe in climate change. N ow, that would be revealing.

Who will put their hands up to admit a sneaking fear that the so-called prophecy might be true? Or do you agree with Professor Cole that we should be doing more to combat real threats? Please send us your comments - assuming we will still be around to read them.

When You Need a Stand-in for Champagne

PARIS-In a recent column, my colleague at The New York Times, Eric Asimov, looked at holiday alternatives to Champagne. Some people in Champagne would argue, with some justification, that there is no such thing, but there are certainly a lot of other wines with bubbles.

Eric focused on American-made sparkling wines. These wines, while relatively widely available in the United States, are rarities elsewhere in the world, especially Europe. But Champagne is not the only Old World sparkling wine. Far from it.

Of all the supposed Champagne alternatives in Europe, the most convincing that I have come across recently are the Sekte from a German producer, Raumland, in the Rheinhessen region. Raumland makes some of its Sekte from the same three grape varieties that preponderate in Champagne â€" pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay. Others are from the more typically German Riesling variety. They all have the chalky dryness, steely intensity and lingering elegance that characterize good Champagne â€" in some cases, at considerably lower prices.

If you can't find Raumland's wines, Sekte from other producers are also improving, though this is still a kind of wine you need to choose carefully. The same goes for most Champagne alternatives.

Geographically speaking, the closest options are the sparkling wines of Burgundy, known as Cremant de Bourgogne. These, two, tend to be made from the Champagne varieties, which is natural, given that pinot noir and chardonnay are also the main grapes in still Burgundy reds and whites.

Cremant de Bourgogne sometimes lacks the focus of Champagne, but these wines can nonetheless represent excellent value; many of them cost less than 10 euros. Reliable producers include Simonnet-Febvre, Bailly-Lapierre and Louis Bouillot.

One of the most difficult things to find is an alternative to a special kind of Champagnes that I discuss in my column this week â€" those that are unsweetened. This category, known as “brut nature,” represents a highly distinctive side of Champagne.

Among the rare examples of this kind of wine that I have come across outside of Champagne is a bubbly called Triple Zero, from Domaine de la Taille Aux Loups, in the Loire Valley. The name refers to the fact that there is no sugar added at any of the three stages when it can be used in sparkling wine production â€" during the initial, alcoholic fermentation; in a subsequent fermentation, when the bubbles are formed; and finally, for sweetening.

Triple Zero is made from chenin blanc grapes, so it doesn't resemble Champagne. But it's a delicious wine in its own right, with subtle fruit flavors and a bracing acidity.

What kind of bubbly will you be serving over the holidays? Do you insist on Champagne, or are you willing to experiment a bit? If so, what are your favorites?

After Newtown Massacre, N.R.A. Proposes \'Absolute Protection\'

Hope that the massacre of 20 5- and 6-year-old children might shirt the terms of the gun-control debate in the United States seemed to recede Friday after the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun-rights lobbying group, came out forcefully for measures other than gun control as a way to prevent future bloodshed in America.

Speaking to a press conference where he did not take questions, Wayne LaPierre, the group's vice president, said, “The only way - the only way - to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” our colleague John H. Cushman, Jr. reported in his article about the press conference.

“The vehement insistence that the single best line of defense was to put armed guards in schools - and the absence of any openness to various suggestions for new gun control measures” dominated the event at a hotel not far from the White House, Jack wrote.

The N.R.A. has about four million members, and exerts its influence on lawmakers through campaign contributions and by rating their votes on gun-related legislation.

According to polling data released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, public attitudes about gun control have shifted only modestly since the Newtown shootings. “Currently, 49 percent say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 42 percent say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns,” the center said. Five months ago, opinion was almost evenly divided on these questions; four years ago, a majority said they favored stricter gun control.

When Rendezvous's Asia Blogger Mark McDonald reported last week that China's state-run media had called for gun-control legislation in the United States, many readers were irate, especially that an authoritarian regime would dare suggest what should happen to Americans' gun rights.

Other Rendezvous readers pointed out that it was the message that was important, not the messenger, and that the United States needed to do something to stop the ever-escalating violence.

Mr. LaPierre, in his press conference Friday, suggested that the government was not using existing gun laws to prosecute those guilty of breaking them. In addition, it had failed by not creating a national database of the mentally ill or stopping the proliferation of gang members and rapists across American communities.

Reflecting the concerns of some RDV readers about violent mayhem coming to the United States - and the need for all law-abiding Americans to be armed to protect themselves and their lo ved ones - Mr. LaPierre said that if you add to the “declined willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals” by the federal government “another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster and you've got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.”

And a “dirty little truth” that Mr. LaPierre said the media “try their best to conceal” was that “there exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people - through viscous, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here's one: It's called Kindergarten Killers. It's been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it and all of yours couldn't. Or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?”

He went on to condemn violent music videos and films as “the filthiest form of pornography” and media con glomerates as “bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty right into our homes, every minute, every day, every hour of every single year.”

In nearly 30 minutes, Mr. LaPierre seemed to sound a clarion call to gun-rights advocates, conservatives and concerned parents of every political stripe that would re-open the American Culture Wars.

He explicitly called out news organizations and their “corporate owners” for acting as “silent enablers, if not explicit co-conspirators” who “rather than facing their own moral failings” “demonize gun owners.”

The battle in the United States is re-joined, it seems, in much the same place it was before 20 children were killed in their classroom on a cold day in Connecticut.

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 21

NEWS In a deal spanning Wall Street, Atlanta and financial centers in Europe, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange agreed on Thursday to an $8.2 billion deal that would give control of the symbolic cradle of American capitalism to an upstart competitor, IntercontinentalExchange. The takeover illustrates how trading in commodities and derivatives has become much more lucrative than trading in the shares of companies. Ben Protess and Nathaniel Popper report from New York.

The polarizing leader of the Indian state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, inched closer on Thursday to becoming the leading political challenger to India's dominant Gandhi family by winning a resounding re-election as chief minister. Gardiner Har ris reports from New Delhi.

At a much-anticipated news conference on Thursday, Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, skirted the question of whether he would support a ban on adoptions of Russian children by American citizens, which lawmakers have approved but which needs his signature to become law. David M. Herszenhorn reports from Moscow.

Not since 1999 has Italy held open examinations to fill teaching positions in its public schools. So when exams opened this week, it set off something of a nationwide frenzy among Italy's despairing underemployed educators, drawing more than 321,000 hopefuls for about 11,500 openings. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Rome.

South Korea's president-elect, Park Geun-hye, c alled for national reconciliation on Thursday, a day after she was elected the country's first female leader in a close contest that reflected generational divides. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Christmas Eve is typically the biggest truffle-eating night of the year in France. But it is an increasingly expensive tradition. Black truffles and other types are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus's Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years. David Jolly reports from Paris.

ARTS The exhibition “Russen & Deutsche” (Russians and Germans), at Berlin 's Neues Museum until Jan. 13, is an ambitious attempt to show how the ties between the two cultures have developed over a thousand years. But it is also highly selective and comes close to idealizing the past, Judy Dempsey writes from Berlin.

SPORTS It would have been hard to match the highs and lows experienced at the London Olympics this year, but rugby did have its share of history, joy, drama and disappointment in 2012, Emma Stoney writes from Knutsford, England.