Photo illustration by Kacper Pempel/Reuters/File

The goals of cyberattacks include spying – an apparent motive behind major intrusions this year into U.S. government and corporate data systems.

The cyberattack appears to be one of the worst in U.S. history. Hackers – likely linked to Russian intelligence – last spring broke into computer networks at a half-dozen or so American government agencies and hundreds of private companies via clever malware that carves secret “back doors” into systems, according to elected officials and private cybersecurity firms.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and others have described the hack as an “invasion” that went on for months and likely resulted in the loss of crucial security and corporate secrets.

But it could have been even worse than it was, say some computer experts. The alleged Russian intruders were in essence spies who apparently were looking for, and then exfiltrating, data. This was espionage, something virtually all nations engage in – even, and perhaps especially, the United States.

The attack does not appear to have resulted in physical damage or personal injury, shut down an electricity grid, or frozen the nation’s financial transactions. In that sense it was not an act of shadowy war under international law, however reckless and compromising it might have been.

What it should be, say experts, is a wake-up call. Common hacker targets such as the Pentagon and big banks are aware of cyber danger and generally fund defenses accordingly. But smaller agencies and many private companies may still not give it the attention and dollars it deserves, particularly when budgets are tight. The U.S. needs to invest more in cybersecurity across the whole spectrum of government and industry, says Mark Montgomery, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“We’d be very fortunate if this is what gets us on the right track,” says Mr. Montgomery, who served as policy director of the Senate Armed Services Committee under the late Republican Sen. John McCain.

A supply chain attack

The nature of this latest intrusion into U.S. computer systems is what made it so worrisome to government cybersecurity officials. It was what they call a “supply chain attack,” meaning it affected a popular software product made by the U.S. firm SolarWinds that monitors the networks of many government entities and businesses.

Hackers slipped malicious code into updates to SolarWinds products. When downloaded, the corrupted code opened access to the infected computers so the attackers could steal information. It wasn’t discovered until the private cybersecurity firm FireEye noticed it had been hacked and went public with the information.

Microsoft, which has helped to try and limit the breach, announced last week that it has identified at least 40 government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and big information technology firms that have been affected. The Treasury Department, for instance, has had multiple systems compromised, including computers used by its highest-ranking officials, according to Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Tech giants Cisco Systems, Intel Corp., and Belkin International are among the corporate victims.

Even if these systems contained only unclassified information – as so far seems to be the case – the aggregate data collected can give the assailant a classified-level understanding of some government efforts, according to Mr. Montgomery. Data can hint toward future policy and regulatory decisions.

Data from the private sector can expose closely held research-and-development information, plans for the future, and system vulnerabilities that might lead to more hacks.

“If an adversary can get inside your system undetected and then wipe away his fingerprints of entry and then establish a new method for transferring the information in and out of your system, they can, in a detailed, organized manner, go through your data,” Mr. Montgomery says.

The supply chain aspect of the attack multiplies this negative effect many times over. SolarWinds has some 18,000 customers, public and private. The firm’s malware infection shows the dangers inherent in the government’s use of third-party suppliers for information technology, says Erica Borghard, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

It’s not as if SolarWinds was a cookie jar with a loose lid, says Ms. Borghard. It was simply a cookie jar with an enormous amount of tempting cookies inside.

“This is really an intelligence failure at scale,” she says.

“Virtually a declaration of war”

Some U.S. elected officials have used bellicose language to respond to the SolarWinds attack. This tendency has been bipartisan: As noted, Senator Romney, a Republican, called it an “invasion.” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois called it “virtually a declaration of war.”

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the Biden administration would respond aggressively to “an attack like this.” On CBS’s “Face the Nation” last Sunday Mr. Klain said: “I want to be very clear, it’s not just sanctions. It’s also steps and things we could do to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to repeat this sort of attack, or [we’ll face] even more dangerous attacks.”

But talking about the SolarWinds episode in military terms, or equating cybersecurity with “deterrence” in a military sense, may be a misleading way of discussing hacker intrusions and other aspects of a shadowy competition between nations waged entirely with keyboards and bits and bytes.

The operation may simply demonstrate the developing nature of great power competition in the information technology age, where rivals use hacker teams to conduct traditional espionage missions and limited operations meant to disrupt and degrade, according to a Lawfare analysis co-written by Dr. Benjamin Jensen, professor of strategic studies at Marine Corps University.

“Though media reports often characterize cyber operations as attacks, many operations are better thought of as instruments of political warfare and weak forms of coercion that do not seek destruction,” Dr. Jensen and his co-authors write.

In addition, the rest of the world may regard the U.S. as the largest and most aggressive actor in cyberspace. The U.S. government hacks foreign counterparts on a huge scale every day, notes Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former Defense Department attorney under President George W. Bush, in The Dispatch.

Some of this presence reflects the Trump administration’s “Defend Forward” policy for U.S. Cyber Command, which involves maintaining a persistent presence within foreign networks from which to confront adversaries when they launch attacks.

Defend Forward may have headed off Russian interference in the 2018 and 2020 elections, but it did nothing to help detect or block the SolarWinds attack, writes Mr. Goldsmith. The new hack in fact may be a tit-for-tat Russian deterrent response to what Moscow deems as American cyber interference.

“It is hard to know where we are in the retaliatory cycle, but it is pretty clear that the United States has more to lose from escalating retaliation,” writes Professor Goldsmith.

A three-pronged response

The first priority of the U.S. should be to secure existing hacked systems, which by itself could be a hugely expensive and difficult endeavor, says the Atlantic Council’s Ms. Borghard.

As they do that, cybersecurity defenders need to try and understand what the Russians were really up to with the attack. Was it a response to the U.S., or the beginning of a larger and more nefarious endeavor?

“I hope that this incident could be a kind of watershed event to prompt us to rethink about the security of our federal government networks,” says Ms. Borghard.

The response could be three-pronged, according to Mr. Montgomery of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies: traditional sanctions, such as the expulsion of diplomats; retaliation against the Russians in terms of a cyber response; and denial via improved cyber defense.

It is that last category in which the U.S. has made the least progress, he says. While financial institutions and tech firms and other obvious targets take cybersecurity seriously, many other companies make it a lower priority, particularly when budgets are tight. Government agencies face the same dynamic, says Mr. Montgomery.

Passing the Defense Authorization bill, which President Donald Trump has threatened to veto, would also help. It contains around 30 provisions that will help remedy U.S. cyber vulnerabilities, according to Mr. Montgomery.

Katherine May loves winter, from the cozy comforts of being indoors to the “blustery outdoor stuff.” But she is no great fan of Christmas – or at least the busywork that starts two months ahead of Dec. 25 and leaves her depleted before it even arrives. “I’m quite well known in my family for opening my Christmas cards standing over the recycling bin and just throwing them in,” she says.

Ms. May, author of the book “Wintering,” which is an ode to the fallow season but also treats it as a metaphor for the tough times in life that can be restorative, for years simply sent out an email greeting at Christmas. This year, however, she ordered custom cards – with images of foxes, polar bears, and festive fireworks. She also lit up her home in Whitstable, on the southeastern coast of England, in a blaze of lights as the days began to darken in November.

She started making her Christmas food earlier, too, family favorites such as pickled piccalilli and red cabbage. This year the holidays, she says, are tinged with loss – they are the first she will spend without her mother – but she is also anticipating a period of rest that sounds “a bit like heaven.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Rick Krugger holds a tree for Ani and Brian Deery and their daughters as the family looks for a tree at Mistletoe Acres Tree Farm in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Like millions around the world, she is navigating the holidays amid a once-in-a-century pandemic that has dramatically altered lifestyles and brought many traditions to a halt. Christmas markets, trips to the mall to sit on Santa’s lap, 20-person dinners, office parties to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa – all have been canceled or pared down. So, too, have been gatherings in churches.

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, the season also brings the shortest days of the year, which may amplify the isolation many people are feeling as they cope with COVID-19. Yet Ms. May is not the only one to say she is finding something comforting about this year’s holiday. She is envisioning a simpler, more intimate affair, without the incessant buzz of commercialism, providing an opportunity to embrace the real spirit of the season.

“I think we’re getting back in contact with exactly what we need Christmas for,” she says. “I’m not hearing so much about presents and buying the toy of the year. I’m hearing a lot more about how we can connect.”

Customs reimagined

A larger-than-life nutcracker – an actor on stilts – approaches a line of cars, towering nearly as tall as the surrounding trees lit up in twinkling red, white, and green lights. Canadian Tire’s Christmas Trail, set up on the north side of Toronto, is a one-mile journey through a winter wonderland of elaborate light installations, live dancers in fairy costumes, and faux snowfall.

Beata Zawrzel/Nurphoto/Getty Images

People snap pictures of illuminated Christmas decorations in a largely empty Podgórski Square in Kraków, Poland.

But the holiday spectacle this year is unlike any in the past, if one of the signature activities is anything to judge by. At the end of the drive, volunteers ask visitors to roll down their windows – with their masks on – to appear in a photo with Santa, who stands at the side of the car.

This is just one way that the 2020 holiday season is being re-imagined. Beloved Christmas markets, which have their roots in Germany and Austria in the Middle Ages and remain a major attraction across Europe and other parts of the world, are going online. Cities and towns are holding their annual holiday parades virtually, and ballet companies are streamlining renditions of “The Nutcracker.”

Department stores, mainstays of the holiday season, have had to strike a fragile balance, as they mount their annual advertisements and displays amid a darker national mood. (An annual holiday survey by Deloitte Canada showed that holiday spending in the country is expected to fall 18% this season. At the same time, Canadians say they are increasing their charitable donations by an average of 86%.)

Macy’s, which has featured its famous holiday window displays in New York City since 1874, dedicated this year’s to thanking essential workers, first responders, and marchers for inequality. The John Lewis & Partners Christmas advertisement, one of the most anticipated in the United Kingdom, chose “Give a Little Love” as its theme. The department store says it was “inspired by the huge wave of kindness that swept across the country” amid the pandemic.

Laura Cluthé/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Harry and Barb Piwerka decorated their house in Whitby, Ontario, with 9,000 Christmas lights and handmade characters. Since the local Christmas parade was canceled, the Piwerkas agreed to install a sleigh and reindeer in their yard.

Ideas for how to celebrate a COVID-19 holiday, and cope with the winter ahead, have been shared across social media: from crocheting blankets and making gingerbread houses, to plunging into frozen lakes and reveling in forests. 

Gretchen Rubin, author of “Happier at Home” and “The Happiness Project,” is spending the holidays without her parents for the first time. It’s a refrain heard around the globe as people forgo traveling, and it comes with deep sadness. But the happiness expert says that stripping down the season to its basics opens a certain space to prioritize and preserve the “essence of the holidays.” That might include cutting down a fragrant spruce or balsam fir at a Christmas tree farm. It might mean creating platters of cookies – chocolate crinkles, buckeyes, or linzer tarts. 

For Ms. Rubin, it means filling her home in New York City with paperwhite narcissus flowers. They evoke for her the iconic smell of the season – one that filled her childhood home in Kansas City, Missouri. “[The pandemic] is helping us realize how precious our traditions are and how much we do value them,” she says. 

Creating new traditions

“Over by Christmas” is a familiar theme, a refrain that British and other Allied soldiers heard in 1914, at the start of World War I, as experts predicted the conflict would end only a few months after it started. The optimism turned out to be cruelly wrong – off by four years and millions of casualties. 

Today the reassuring comfort of the holidays is invoked in a different way, not as a prediction of when the pandemic will end but as an incentive to get people to help stop it. In guiding countries through a second wave of COVID-19, many political leaders urged residents in the fall to adhere to public health guidelines as a way to “save” Christmas.

Michael Probst/AP

A sparse crowd strolls Römerberg square in Frankfurt, Germany. Usually people throng the area when the traditional Christmas market is set up, but this year the market was canceled due to the coronavirus.

A few months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Canadians to act now in wearing masks and social distancing so the virus could be brought under control enough to allow people to celebrate the holidays. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron, who tested positive and is in isolation until Christmas Eve, said he hoped his country’s second lockdown would preserve Christmas.

But many leaders who sought to promise some semblance of normalcy this season have had to shift course. Plans in Britain to allow people to meet with friends or family members in limited social “bubbles” have been canceled in hard-hit areas like London amid the detection of a new strain of the coronavirus. Some of Germany’s most beloved traditions, such as caroling in churches, have also been called off. Even many of the simplest Yuletide traditions are being discouraged or jettisoned.

“I think there are a lot of customs, there are traditions and so forth, all of which scream to the individual, ‘Go be with family, get together with your loved ones,’” says Craig Smith, an associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “And for many that can be a very dangerous visit. Part of what we need to do is to come up with alternatives to lessen the sense of isolation and the feelings of loneliness.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A holiday wreath hangs on a door on Main Street in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Noreen Sibanda, a registered provisional psychologist in Edmonton, Alberta, encourages more creativity in connecting with people, like making traditional food and delivering it to family members. She says while many people may feel down at the holidays because they’re isolated, this year virtually everyone is on their own to some degree. “We are all going through it,” she says.

Another strategy is to adopt a “positive winter mindset,” says Kari Leibowitz, a health psychologist and interdisciplinary graduate fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She studied the way residents in Tromsø, Norway, a town 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, survive their polar nights, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon for two months in the winter. (Tromsø also happens to be included in a chapter in Ms. May’s “Wintering,” detailing her search to capture a glimpse of the northern lights.) 

Ms. Leibowitz found that, instead of feeling dread about winter, many see it as an opportunity to spend more time outdoors – a concept called friluftsliv in Norwegian (“open air life”) – and engage in the same kind of socializing that the pandemic demands of societies around the world, warm or cold. It’s twinned with another Nordic concept called koselig in Norwegian – and better known for its Danish name, hygge – which is a mood of coziness or comfort, an ideal people can embrace while staying indoors during isolating times. 

“So trying to look for the opportunities in the situation, especially with the pandemic that nobody really wants to be in, is a way that we can adopt this wintertime mindset of looking at the possibilities rather than just focusing on the ways in which we’re limited,” says Ms. Leibowitz.

That’s not to negate what’s been taken away, she says. Each December she and her roommates usually host a huge latke party: They turn 60 pounds of potatoes into pancakes. She says she is mourning the loss of that tradition this year. And yet she is also looking forward to a quieter, more restful season – not traveling across the country and visiting so many family members that she needs a vacation afterward. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Holiday pails that say “Be merry” are filled with greenery at Weston Nurseries in Hingham, Massachusetts.

“If we focus only on how much we’re missing, we can’t see anything that we’re gaining,” Ms. Leibowitz says.

She believes it could also lead to different ways of viewing and experiencing the holidays. “It’s an opportunity to take a pause and reevaluate some of our holiday traditions this year and see if we want to do things a little differently, moving forward, with a little bit more intention, that is a little bit more aligned with our values rather than, ‘Oh, this is what we do, because this is what we’ve always done.’”

“Invite the winter in”

Rethinking the holidays strikes a chord with many. Last Christmas, Susanna Shetley, an editor at the Smoky Mountain News in North Carolina, traveled with her family – a blended one that includes five children between the ages of 8 and 16 – to New York City. They saw the Radio City Rockettes. They went to Rockefeller Center. They went ice skating and visited the window displays on Fifth Avenue. It had capped off a month of holiday functions and school events. She got home on Dec. 22 in time to wrap all her family’s presents. 

This year is just the opposite. With no events and no travel, they decided to start new traditions at home. They bought a puzzle after Thanksgiving – a city scene at Christmas – with the goal of finishing and framing it before Dec. 25. They purchased a big wreath and decorated it with berries and ribbons.

“I think that the pandemic has made me realize that the holidays don’t have to be so hectic,” she says.

Laura Cluthé/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Canadian Tire’s Christmas Trail, which runs through a northern district of Toronto, is a one-mile drive that features light displays, live dancers, and elves handing out cookies.

Schereeya Reed has a different outlook, too. A young mother of two who says she struggles with depression during winter months, she recently tweeted: “I will be embracing the dark, cold months. Channeling my inner winter fairy. Baking cozy foods and watching cozy movies. Going outside for sunshine every day. Pretending to be Nordic and having Cozy Winter.”

Ms. Reed, who lives in Pittsburgh but is originally from North Carolina, is also starting an Instagram Live and TikTok program called “The Schereeya Show.” As she advertises it: “It’s designed to bring sunshine to the increasingly darker days of Pandemic Winter.”

And that includes during the holidays. Not a fan of Christmas herself, having grown up in a religious family that eschewed the capitalism associated with Christmas, she says she and her husband have never put up a tree. This year they are planning on putting up two, decorating their apartment, walking around the neighborhood to marvel at other light displays, and preparing a constant flow of hot beverages. 

“I think it’s probably accurate to say that this is the first Christmas that I’m allowing myself to feel jolly, I guess, like allowing myself to just participate in the joy of it all,” Ms. Reed says. “Because of the pandemic, I definitely feel like you have to do everything you can to promote and sustain your own joy.”

Ms. May, the author of “Wintering,” says she expects the holidays this year will be a metaphorical winter for many people – a time when unwanted change arrives.

Her book came out in the United Kingdom right before the pandemic made everything familiar unfamiliar. And she says she has returned to it for guidance during the second lockdown, amid the normally bustling holiday season and the darkest days of the year.

“We must learn to invite the winter in,” she writes in the book. “We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.”

Al Drago/Reuters

Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler greets supporters following a campaign event with Republican Sen. David Perdue and White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump (not pictured) at the Olde Blind Dog Irish Pub in Milton, Georgia, Dec. 21, 2020.

To Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the gospel that her opponent preaches from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta is a threat to capitalism and the American way of life.

She has not minced words. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, whom she faces in a Jan. 5 runoff for United States Senate, is a “radical liberal,” she repeatedly says. At a rally for Senator Loeffler, former Rep. Doug Collins went further: “There is no such thing as a pro-choice pastor. What you have is a lie from the bed of hell. It is time to send it back to Ebenezer Baptist Church.”

Perhaps such heated rhetoric should not be surprising. The election – along with a second Georgia runoff on the same day – will determine which party controls the Senate in Washington. With Democrats now set to hold the White House and House of Representatives, the Georgia races represent a last stand for Republicans this election cycle.

Yet the targeting of Mr. Warnock’s beliefs has taken the election beyond politics. It has revealed the deep differences in the South between a white Christian tradition founded on personal salvation, and a Black Christian tradition that preaches liberation and social justice. In that way, the political balance of power in Washington could hinge on how Georgia resolves tensions about faith that date back to America’s founding.

In the past, when those two strands of Christianity have clashed, Ebenezer has been a salve, honored as the church of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But the religious nature of the attacks on Mr. Warnock suggests not just a base-energizing strategy, but a willingness to risk the bonds of those efforts to find common ground and healing.

“This McCarthy-esque frightening plays on polarization and tribalism, and has become a departure from a fragile trajectory of increased bipartisan civility” between Republicans and the Black church, says Robert Franklin, the former president of Morehouse College, who now holds a chair in moral leadership at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

“At its heart it’s a mischaracterization,” he adds. “This is not Marxian economics. This is Christian social gospel.”

David Goldman/AP/File

The Rev. Raphael Warnock speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Jan. 12, 2018. Former President Barack Obama is endorsing Mr. Warnock in the race to fill a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.

Pastors’ concerns

On Saturday, more than 100 Black pastors wrote to Senator Loeffler, asking her to “cease and desist your false characterizations of Reverend Warnock as ‘radical’ or ‘socialist.’… We see your attacks against Warnock as a broader attack against the Black Church and faith traditions for which we stand.”

Senator Loeffler pushed back on the accusation, tweeting, “No one attacked the Black church.”

Addressing Mr. Warnock, she wrote, “We simply exposed your record in your own words. Instead of playing the victim, start answering simple questions about what you’ve said and who you’ve associated yourself with. If you can’t – you shouldn’t be running for U.S. Senate.”

While few members of Congress are ordained ministers, the House currently has more than at any time since Congress began keeping occupational statistics in the 1950s, according to Robert Speel, a political scientist at the Pennsylvania State University. The first ministers from the Black church to serve in Congress date back to Reconstruction.

Mr. Warnock presided over the funeral of civil rights leader John Lewis as well as Rayshard Brooks, the Black man killed by an Atlanta police officer this summer. Ebenezer has long been seen as a place of fellowship, even by those who might disagree with its religious worldview. Senator Loeffler’s first event as a member of the U.S. Senate was to speak at Ebenezer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day – part of an annual pilgrimage by Republicans to pay homage to the King family and the broader Black church.

Role of faith in the election

In such a high-stakes election it is natural that religion would become a key motivator.

“Churches have power,” says Trelleny Joiner, a faith organizer at the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter registration effort. “Especially being here in the Bible Belt and Georgia having very deep faith and religious roots, there’s not really any separation between church and state when you consider how faith communities have such a big role in the political agenda of a state or a community – or the whole nation.”

That has made abortion a top issue for many voters. Mr. Warnock’s pro-abortion-rights stance has caused problems within his own religious community, too, with conservative Black pastors criticizing him for his views.

But every issue, it seems, has an undercurrent of race and culture beneath it, says the Rev. Dwight Andrews, senior pastor at First Congregational Church of Atlanta.

“People aren’t asking thoughtful questions about who would be the best leader for the future, but who is white and who is Black, who is the demon and who is going to be the savior of whiteness?” he says.

The campaign has become a test of Georgia values, he adds.

Ben Gray/AP

U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (left) and Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock appear during a debate, Dec. 6, 2020, in Atlanta.

Aaron Goldstein wrestled with his decision in both races – Senator Loeffler versus Mr. Warnock and Republican Senator David Perdue versus Democrat Jon Ossoff. He moved from New York to Atlanta two months ago for a new job. A Republican and naturalized citizen from Canada, Mr. Goldstein voted by absentee ballot last week for Mr. Warnock – with great hesitation.

“If Loeffler and Perdue lose, it will be because of their own naked self-interest, and that’s something that is going to resonate,” he says. “If Ossoff and Warnock are successful, it will be in large part because Perdue and Loeffler made it clear they didn’t care” about issues that face Georgians, from the pandemic to racial harmony, he adds. 

View from Trump country 

Bill Sawyer has a different vantage point. The cowboy-booted Texas transplant is one of the few remaining residents of New Ebenezer, Georgia, perched above the mud-stained whorls of the Savannah River. The town was founded as a religious utopia by Protestant exiles from Austria in the late 18th century, and Mr. Sawyer lives in one of the cabins at a Christian retreat.

Here in Effingham County, a record 80% of eligible voters cast ballots in the November election, with Senator Loeffler besting Mr. Warnock by a 3-to-1 margin. Yet Mr. Sawyer senses a shift.

He is city manager of a town not far away, about 40 miles outside Savannah. It is growing by leaps and bounds, with 300 new homes being built in a town of 1,600 people. But the newcomers are noticeably more progressive than the county as a whole.

Senator Loeffler was originally seen as someone who could build common cause with those voters, Mr. Sawyer says. Her ownership of a Women’s National Basketball Association team and her outreach to Ebenezer early in her tenure pointed in that direction. 

Instead, her decision to forgo that suburban appeal for full-throated base mobilization “seems like a rookie mistake” out of tune with Georgia sensibilities, says Mr. Sawyer.

“What people in this state want is service and acceptability,” he says. “That’s not the message that’s being conveyed. And that could backfire in the suburbs, where this race will be decided.”

For Yasmine Harrazi, an unemployed administrative assistant in Tunis, the reason for her hardships is clear.

“The revolution was a mistake,” says Ms. Harrazi, reflecting on the 10th anniversary of Tunisia’s Dec. 17 democratic uprising against the dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

“We staged the revolution because we didn’t have freedom of expression. Now we can speak, but we can’t cover the cost of food – the revolution failed.”

A polarized society unable to agree on shared facts, an outsider populist dominating the media cycle by breaking norms and scapegoating the “other,” widespread anger over inequality and distrust in the political establishment – the trappings of populism are now familiar across the world.

Such developments are particularly worrying in the Arab world’s lone democracy, Tunisia, still emerging from a fragile post-revolution transition and surrounded by autocratic neighbors anxious to interfere and thwart their democratic project.

Yet a decade on from the democratic revolution that spurred the Arab Spring and shocked the world, economic hardships and the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing Tunisians toward a reactionary populism and nostalgia for the ousted dictatorship, questioning the revolution itself.

They are encouraged by a charismatic and polarizing member of parliament, Abir Moussi, an apologist for the Ben Ali regime who uses the full array of populist levers – including friendly news outlets – to catapult herself and her party to prominence.

Unfulfilled promise

A sense of unfulfilled promises permeates Tunisia.

Many Tunisians direct their ire at a political class they say has focused exclusively on freedoms, one part of protesters’ demands for “dignity, freedom, social justice” – at the expense of the other two.

“Because the transition was led by politicians and civil society, they focused their efforts on the constitution, election laws, [and] civil and political rights, rather than the serious concerns of those who went to the streets for a better life and job opportunities,” says Amine Ghali, director of the Tunis-based Al Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center.

“If someone has less food on his plate or less salary, of course he would be mad at the revolution,” says Mr. Ghali. “People do not eat constitutions, do not drink elections, and do not sleep under the roof of the freedom of the press.”

The economic failures of Tunisia’s post-revolution political class, mired in partisan deadlock, have become starker amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which wiped out gains made by the tourism industry in 2019 and could drive unemployment to as much as 25% by the year’s end, even higher among youths.

Riadh Dridi/AP

A demonstrator shows his diploma as he attends a protest in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia, Dec. 17, 2020. The economically troubled region, where the revolt against the dictatorship erupted 10 years ago, is still waiting to reap rewards.

Much of this anger is directed at Ennahda, the self-styled Muslim Democrats who were banned by Mr. Ben Ali and are now seen by Tunisians as the establishment after co-writing the 2014 constitution, maintaining the largest bloc in parliament, and being in and out of governing coalitions since 2011.

“All the governments that came after the revolution brought the same policies that benefited businessmen and lobbyists, and the result is always failure,” says Anis Gafsawi, who closed his paper factory in Kasserine, southwest Tunisia, due to the pandemic.  

“People have less dignity now than before the revolution. Things are worse than during the old regime.”

Populism rising

The clear winner of Tunisians’ disillusionment is the populist Ms. Moussi.

One year after a failed long-shot presidential bid vaulted her to national prominence, Ms. Moussi is using parliament as a bully pulpit to defend the former regime, slander rivals, and harness public anger to challenge the revolution.

The focal point of Ms. Moussi’s populism is Ennahda, which she blames for all ills facing Tunisia. She calls for criminal investigations into the Islamist party and its allies for alleged ties to foreign states – especially Turkey and Qatar – and calls the movement or MPs who disagree with her “terrorists.”

She regularly derides parliament as “broken” and calls for a return to a strong presidential system to ban Ennahda, curb freedoms, impose law and order, and provide blanket economic and social welfare.

“When Abir Moussi talks, she is not unlike Donald Trump; she repeats phrases several times, repeats ideas, half-truths and untruths; and bullies anyone who dares speak against her,” says Youssef Cherif, analyst and director of the Columbia Global Centers in Tunis, describing her as “the archetypical populist.”

Ms. Moussi regularly captures headlines by derailing entire sessions of parliament with her outbursts. It has become a winning formula.

Ms. Moussi’s Free Dastourian Party has shot to the top of the polls. Elections are not scheduled for another four years, but were they held today her party would win 36.9% of votes, with Ennahda coming in second at 17%, according to Tunis-based Sigma Polling.

“Abir Moussi and her allies are nostalgic about the old regime, and they hope to bring it back,” says Issa Abboud, an unemployed actor from Tunis whose father died while a political prisoner under the dictatorship.

“Abir’s politics are based on exclusion. If you listen to her speak, she never talks about the economy, but she is always demonizing someone. There are lots of people who support her and many people will vote for her in the next elections.”

Jdidi wassim/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Reuters

Abir Moussi (center), president of the Free Dastourian Party, with party members Samira Sayhi, Hajer Naifer, Zeineb Safari, and Awatef Kouraich during the seating of parliament. Ms. Moussi regularly captures headlines by derailing sessions of parliament with her outbursts against rivals.

Ms. Moussi’s rhetoric prompts emotional responses from critics, deepening the polarization.

“Abir Moussi represents a fascist and eradicated party that would lead us only into backwardness,” says Mehdi Wetatani, a Tunis teacher and Ennahda supporter. “It is even worse than Ben Ali’s party. I describe it as a Nazi party. If she becomes president of Tunisia, forget about liberties!”

Alternative history

While, like populists in the West, she regularly peddles alternative facts, Ms. Moussi’s most effective rhetoric deals in alternative history. 

According to Ms. Moussi, the Ben Ali era was a golden age when salaries were guaranteed, security was airtight, and the social ills of poverty, unemployment, and crime were nonexistent.

She repeatedly claims without evidence that the 2010-11 democratic revolution was a conspiracy by Qatar and Turkey to install an “Islamist dictatorship,” that Ennahda is a terrorist group with links to Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood, and that young Tunisians who led the protests that brought down the Ben Ali regime were “agents of the West” determined to topple a strong and stable Arab state to put it at the mercy of Western capitalists.

“She is creating another world for supporters by saying everything that happened is wrong, that the entire narrative of the revolution is a lie,” says Mr. Cherif. “A lot of Tunisians who are disenfranchised and unhappy with the last 10 years are starting to believe this narrative.”

This revisionist history is boosted by Ms. Moussi’s media platform.

Her talking points are promoted by regional Arab networks based in Gulf monarchy states that are sympathetic to her anti-Islamist, anti-democracy bent.

Saudi satellite network Al Arabiya and Emirati outlets that beam to households across the region regularly broadcast Ms. Moussi’s press conferences and interviews, running her statements as “breaking news” – coverage reserved for heads of state.

Observers say it is no longer discernible whether Ms. Moussi is repeating Saudi and Emirati talking points, or whether their talking points mirror her narrative.

But they are helping Ms. Moussi become mainstream and dominate the media cycle.

As often in post-revolution Tunisia, however, the tide can quickly change.

Ms. Moussi herself polls at 12% to 19% for president, a distant second to incumbent Kais Saied, who so far has successfully maintained an appearance of being above the fray. Observers say there is enough time for another party and figure to emerge to slow down her meteoric rise ahead of an early election.

They point to polls from early this year that indicate that once the pandemic gets under control and a semblance of normal life returns, so too will hope for the future.

Meanwhile, Tunisians agree that it is better to have their disagreements in public and in parliament, using their newfound freedom of speech to chart a new direction for the country.

“No matter how chaotic it may seem today, at least we can now criticize the chaos and discuss our leaders’ and representatives’ failures freely,” says Mohamed Bliwa, a call-center operator in Tunis.

“The revolution is not an entire failure. I see it as a work in progress.”

Brian Snyder/Reuters

A pedestrian passes the words “Merry Christmas Happy New Year” as snow falls in Somerville, Massachusetts, Dec. 5, 2020. Holiday celebrations have been muted this year, amid the ongoing pandemic.

As the second hand ticks on toward New Year’s Eve and the dawn of another year, celebrations might seem like a muted afterthought amid a pandemic that is still playing out. Indeed many of the annual festivities marking the turning year have been canceled or scaled back.

For some, however, the new year still offers an invitation to take stock of the past, to consider the blessings of the present, and to make hopeful plans for the future. We asked three thinkers – a Jesuit priest, a researcher of happiness, and a contemporary artist – to reflect on this particular turning point as a catalyst for reflection, celebration, and resolution. 

How should we reflect on 2020?

At the end of a difficult year, some may be tempted to wipe the slate clean and forget the past. But the Rev. Sam Sawyer, a Jesuit priest based in the Manhattan borough of New York, shares some inspired wisdom from Pope Francis. 

“In these times of suffering and enforced solitude,” Father Sawyer paraphrases, “there are opportunities for change. We can either go into them and embrace the fact that we are being changed or be resistant to it.”

Adverse events or major changes in life often reveal one’s personality and habits in new ways, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside whose research focuses on the psychology of happiness. 

Reflecting upon those changes could allow for new epiphanies about ourselves. “Maybe we thought we knew who we were, but now we are more certain,” says Dr. Lyubomirsky.

“A lot of this coming new year is about what we are going to make of how we’ve changed in the last year,” says Father Sawyer. “What do we want to retain to form a greater sense of solidarity?”

Is there room for celebration?

In times of adversity, it becomes even more important to seek joy, says Dr. Lyubomirsky. “Research shows that when you’re happier, you have essentially stronger resources to manage adversity.” 

One of the simplest ways to welcome a bit of happiness into your own life is to help others, she says.

“Even when we’re not doing so well, helping someone else can help us feel better about ourselves,” says Dr. Lyubomirsky. “Helping others makes people happier – it redirects attention from our own problems.”

Such efforts need not be monumental. Even simple kindnesses such as helping older neighbors with groceries or tutoring children without access to technology can prove beneficial for both recipient and giver.

Father Sawyer also emphasizes the importance of grounding ourselves in gratitude. 

“Whatever moments during the pandemic and 2020 where we really have found things to be grateful for, hold on to those and remind ourselves of them with frequency as we go into the new year,” he says. “That’s what we want to build on.”

How might we think about our lives differently for the future?

Makoto Fujimura, a contemporary artist, speaker, and writer who was in downtown Manhattan on 9/11, has seen friends continue to deal with the aftermath of that attack 19 years later. He uses kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by using gold to mend the cracks – as a metaphor for healing. 

“I’m discovering that when I teach kintsugi that you have to not only pay attention to the cracks, but [also] hairline fractures that you can’t even see,” he says. “I think part of our journey in 2021 and 2022 is not ignoring those microscopic fractures.” 

The world has certainly been changed in incalculable ways. As in kintsugi, Mr. Fujimura says, we can choose to respond creatively and in generative ways to create a new – if not better – world from the cracks. “If we can see that as a gift, 2020 is one of the greatest moments in history where we have this year of Sabbath and we can grow from that,” he says.

Hindsight, it’s often said, is 20/20. And like eye vision, Mr. Fujimura says 2020 has given us clarity. And that’s a good thing, he says. “I want to be able to see clearly and understand what’s happening even if it’s hard.”

In 2016, Pete Docter bounded on to the stage at the Academy Awards to accept an Oscar. Holding his gleaming statuette for the top animated film, the director of Pixar’s “Inside Out” proclaimed that everyone in the room was fortunate, “because, regardless of a gold man or not, we get to make stuff!”

But during his descent from that artistic Everest, the animator behind “Monsters, Inc.” and “Up” was surprised to find that he didn’t feel any different. The win hadn’t fulfilled him. And the prospect of returning to work left him dejected. In an interview with the Monitor, Mr. Docter recalls wondering, “How many more of these do I have in me? And really, is this the best use of the time that I have on Earth? Could I be doing something more either for myself or for the world?”

The search for meaning

The turmoil within Mr. Docter sparked the idea for Pixar’s latest, “Soul” (premiering on Disney+ on Dec. 25). It’s a metaphysical adventure in which the protagonist faces the same question that Mr. Docter had to answer for himself: What is the meaning of life?

“Soul” features Pixar’s first Black lead character and is co-directed by Kemp Powers, who is also Black. It is Mr. Docter’s first directorial effort since he became the studio’s chief creative officer. The movie is imbued with his signature traits as a storyteller: offbeat whimsy anchored by a deeply felt wisdom. 

“There’s a real sophisticated gentleness to those movies,” says Derrick Clements, a fan who interviewed key figures at the studio, including Mr. Docter, for “The Pixar Podcast.” “They have a lot of really big ideas that they’re wrestling with.”

The story follows a New York City jazz pianist, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who feels as if his life has amounted to nothing. But on the eve of what promises to be a major career break, he is fatally injured. Joe’s soul enters a realm that iconic Pixar character Buzz Lightyear might describe as “infinity and beyond.” 

Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP/File

Pixar’s latest film, "Soul," is the brainchild of director and chief creative officer Pete Docter. He drew from his own life for its themes.

“We’re more than just the physical stuff of our bones and skin,” says Mr. Docter, musing on the meaning of the film’s title. “There’s something at the heart of each of us that is the essence of who we are ... that goes on after we die.”

In a bid to return to his body, Joe finds his way to The Great Before, an onboarding center for souls preparing to go to Earth for the first time. Joe’s ticket back is mentoring another soul, known as 22 (Tina Fey), who has spent all eternity trying to figure out her life’s purpose.

Early inspiration

Like Joe, Mr. Docter knew from an early age what he wanted to do in life. When his fourth grade teacher observed him drawing “Peanuts” cartoon characters, she said, “Why don’t you make some of your own?” Mr. Docter’s first job after college was helping Pixar develop its breakout hit, “Toy Story.” 

He won his first Oscar for “Up,” which features a cantankerous older gentleman who ties so many helium-filled balloons to his home that it floats away. 

But even with all of his success, Mr. Docter could not shake doubts about his self-worth, which made him feel as untethered as that house. “Soul” grapples with that age-old philosophical dilemma of whether there’s any purpose to life. “We try to make it fun and approachable by dramatizing that in the form of these two characters,” says Mr. Docter. “One who’s basically an essentialist. He believes, ‘I was given this thing of music and that’s what I’m meant to do.’ And then we have this soul who refuses to go down and be born on Earth. She is kind of a nihilist. You know, there’s no point to anything.”

A lifelong Christian, Mr. Docter addressed his anxiety by turning to prayer. Sometimes, he says, just sitting down with his sketchbook to draw something as simple as the front door of a house is a moment of holy communion – a reminder to be present in life rather than mired in one’s negative thoughts. “Soul” doesn’t have any Christian overtones, but its characters have to reframe preexisting ideas of what gives life meaning.

“What we’re all looking for is this idea that we’re not just a lone speck floating around, that we’re somehow connected to something bigger than just us,” says Mr. Docter. “There is an understanding in faith that everyone is worthy and everyone is loved. And that kind of breaks your heart wide open when you can really let that in.”

AP

A father plays with his son at the Esplanade of Ministries, illuminated with lights and a large Christmas tree, in Brasilia, Brazil, Dec. 21, 2020.

Christmas has always been about light. It follows the winter solstice, which signals that days in the Northern Hemisphere will now grow longer. More light!

Christmas light illumines thoughts as well. Celebrating the birth of a child who brought a world-changing message speaks of a new beginning. A time to glimpse unlimited possibilities.

This year some in Britain’s news media bemoaned that “Christmas is canceled,” after Prime Minister Boris Johnson found it necessary to call for a lockdown on public activities following the discovery of a new strain of the COVID-19 virus circulating there.

Antonis Kousoulis, director of England and Wales operations for the Mental Health Foundation, urged officials to explain why limiting gatherings was really a kindness. “I find ‘Christmas is canceled’ is a little bit unhelpful,” he said. “I think it would be better if we said, ‘we’ll get through this together’ and ‘we’ll support each other.’”

The truth remains that because Christmas abides in human hearts, it can never be canceled.

Christmas 2020 finds people still expressing the Christmas spirit everywhere. A grocery store worker told The Boston Globe that those coming in right now have never been kinder or friendlier.

They say, “‘Thank you for going to look for this,’ or ‘Thank you for your help,’” the worker wrote in a column. “I continue to hear gratitude in my customers’ voices. I see it in their eyes, the glisten that lets me know they are smiling behind their masks.”

Others are making their own contribution to a happy Christmas. Essential workers such as those in hospitals are among the holiday heroes. Postal and other delivery workers are handling a prodigious number of packages, providing a new way that “shoppers rush home with their treasures.”

Most people already sense that now is the time to keep in close touch with friends and relatives, perhaps checking in on someone they haven’t talked with in a while or don’t know well.

For many families online video chats may substitute for crowding around a single festive table. (Expert tips: Have a fun story to tell the group. Give each participant a chance to say something before the free-for-all begins. What to talk about? Show the group your prized pooch or, even better, the new baby. No words needed.)

In 2020 the holiday spirit keeps popping up despite the challenges. Outdoor Christmas light displays at botanical gardens or other public places put on shimmering shows for visitors.

Even nativity pageants go on, although in altered forms. Children can be recorded individually as an angel or shepherd at home and then synced up in front of an appropriate backdrop for online viewing by admiring parents.

“This [Christmas] shakes you out of your old patterns and lets new things emerge,” the Rev. Brad Froslee, pastor at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minnesota, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “The Nativity story is about people coming from all directions, during a strange time, and ending in a miracle,” he said. “It seems to be much the same now.”

Revelry may not reach new heights in 2020, but the opportunity for thoughtful contemplation of the Christmas message remains.

“I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity,” the Monitor’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, once wrote, “letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth’s appearing.”

That celebration of Christmas lives on within the heart, always shedding new light.