December 25, 2006

So this is Christmas, and what have you done? sang John Lennon.

Well? I'm asking you, readers. Have you achieved great things? Or have you spent the year like me, with a sour look on your face, your back end heavy with yearning, your middle in stasis and your front end packed with dread?

Never mind. Some of you deserve a fine Christmas this year, the good wishes of every Canadian and something that combines beauty and fragrance and taste … I know. All of you wonderful people listed below, go eat a peony. Sniff it, stroke it and gulp it down. You're the best.

Martha Hall Findlay was the only woman among the Liberal candidates fighting to lead the party. She came last. Yet she ran the best campaign, travelling the country in her Big Red Bus, spreading the message about climate change and new strategies for Canada. She will be our PM one day. Ségolçne Royal is the French socialists' presidential candidate. France isn't a country that appreciates powerful women (see Canada). Magnificent.

Elizabeth May leads Canada's Green Party. Climate change will hit Canada very hard. Sometimes it takes a woman to get things started.

Michelle Bachelet, once Gen. Augusto Pinochet's torture victim, is now Chile's president. It was odd beyond words to see her in power, and then see the coffin of the Dr. Mengele of Chile trundle past. All hail Chile's democratic future!

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is two steps away from the U.S. presidency. I do not wish a violent end to Bush and Cheney. A nice little twin resignation will do.

Maher Arar was sent to hell for a year by the U.S., the RCMP and our gullible media. The Americans are still lying, Ottawa has yet to write a huge cheque, and as far as I know, no reporter has apologized. Yet he remains strong, his eyes wide open. Wouldn't be my reaction.

Amnesty International backed Arar when Canada wouldn't. Give generously, please.

Robert Fisk is Britain's greatest journalist. You cannot understand the Middle East without reading his history of an agonizing century, The Great War for Civilization. His personal bravery is astounding; I did not think he would survive covering the latest Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

George Monbiot is one of Britain's greatest crusaders for justice. Read his new book on climate change, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning.Go to www.monbiot.com to read his latest newspaper columns. Good writer, great reporter.

Stéphane Dion will be our next prime minister. I'm quite pleased. He should do a climate change deal with the NDP and the PQ, since the Tories think it's bad science. The planet deserves it.

Chris Haddock has created some of the best Canadian TV ever made: DaVinci's Inquest, DaVinci's City Hall and most recently, Intelligence , which I am currently watching in a state of hypertension. Thanks to Haddock, I trust no one.

Mireille Giuliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat,has written an even better book called French Women For All Seasons. Alternative title: For God's Sake, Do Something About Your Hair. Second alternative title: Or Just Stay Home.

Canadian doctor Vincent Lam wrote a book. Margaret Atwood recommended it highly. Awww, Margaret, do I have to? If it's set on a farm in the Prairies and the cow dies in a blizzard … But I loved it. Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures begins with the formlessness of youth and moves on to the strict rules, precise timing and high windows of adult life.

Mary-Kay Wilmers is the editor of my current favourite publication, the London Review of Books. I rip the plastic bag off in my haste to get to this clever thing packed with erudition, precision and a sort of intellectual ruefulness.

Linda McQuaig is the only journalist whose analysis of the Iraq Study Group report made me sit up and take notice. Presented as a grenade in Bush's lap, it is in fact a plan for the U.S. to maintain rigid control of Iraq's oil. McQuaig is as valuable to this country as, well, black gold, Texas tea. (Mum, that means oil.)

Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star is the only Canadian journalist who tells the truth about Canadian journalism. She's scary and humane at the same time, as are all the great reporters.

Michaëlle Jean, our Governor General, is a beacon of hope. Intelligent, warm, inspired, she outshines our politicians, not that that's much of a compliment.

Arianna Huffington is a rich Californian whose tastes and values are alien to mine. She can't write. But her blog, The Huffington Post, is essential reading. It stays true to digital values by constantly changing. If only newspapers could move this fast, they wouldn't be dying in their La-Z-Boys.

Cary Tennis is the advice columnist for Salon.com. He writes with great wit and compassion about Americans who have insoluble personal problems. Give up, I'd say, but Cary never does.

Nigel Slater is Britain's best chef. He's very sensible, no Mockneyisms like Jamie Oliver, no elephant's foot cakes like Nigella Lawson.

Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton directed their first movie, Little Miss Sunshine. I have already told you to purchase this DVD. Did you? I shan't tell you again.

Ruth Rendell is the greatest mystery writer alive. She's even better than the dead ones. P.D. James writes mannered garbage. Rendell writes literature.

The aptly named Amy Winehouse is the new British rock sensation. Her brilliant new CD is called Back to Black. She's a hard-drinking mess, which is what rockers should be, not all this clean-living detox nonsense.

Ricky Gervais created the TV comedies The Office and Extras. But his free podcasts on the Guardian's website this year were incredibly funny. Just him, co-writer Stephen Merchant and a round-headed oddment named Karl Pilkington sitting around chatting. Mumbling actually.

Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion. He says there's no god. He says it 800 different ways, spins you thrice and you're cured.

Kate Bush's new CD Aerial was close to her best. It was also her first release in more than a decade. But at least she got it right.

The American cultural historian Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, about the working poor, has a new book out. Dancing in the Streets is about the celebration of communal joy (not much of that lately). The first to point out the weirdness of breast cancer fundraising's pink teddybearness, Ehrenreich is always worth reading.

Luenell is the American actress who played the prostitute of the same name in the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy Borat. She is obese. She is black. She is loathed by the white Southerners with whom Borat is disastrously dining. And she brings a sweetness and gentleness to the film that hardly seems possible amid the naked fights, masturbation, racism, gypsy tears and broken chickens of this screamingly funny, tragic film.

My beloved Amy Sedaris, sister of the famed David Sedaris, is a humourist, an actor, a tumbler and, above all, a hostess. Her coffee table book I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence is a party-giving manual for life's failures, sad sacks and no-hopers. You know, normal people.

I shall end with America's greatest, the master of truthiness, Stephen Colbert himself. Host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report,Colbert and his elaborate parody of Bill O'Reilly and other neocon wackos starts with brilliance and heads off into the ether. Is he a great comedian or the greatest comedian? It is beyond words. It is The Word. Watch the show and figure out all the in-jokes in this entry.

Happy holidays!