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This is the only “So Long, 2022!” column you need to read. I combed The New York Times’ archives for all the pivotal moments.

It turns out that 2022 was a MAJOR year for firsts. True, other years had their noteworthy events—the first flight, the first man to walk on the moon, the first iPhone and so on. But step aside, 1903, 1969 and 2007! This past year was a goldmine of firsts. Below are just some of the epochal moments registered by the newspaper of broken record.

January 5: “Adrienne Adams Makes History as First Black N.Y.C. Council Speaker.”

Boise, Idaho, held a special parade to mark the occasion!

February 13: Erin Jackson wins gold in the 500 meters, "becoming the first African American woman to win a medal” in speedskating.

If this historic trend continues, could we one day see a black man in the NBA?

February 27: Burna Boy “will be the first Nigerian musician to headline Madison Square Garden.”

Just think of how much history we have to look forward to—the first Mauritian to headline MSG, the first Gambian to headline MSG ... (There are unconfirmed rumors that a Djiboutian may have played cymbals at the Blue Note once, but apparently that moment was lost to history.)

March 6: Memoirist Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is “the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits and the first Peruvian woman to summit Everest.”

She practiced by hiking up the remains of Peru’s mass child sacrifice—believed to the largest in the world!

March 17: “[Lia] Thomas, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship.”

Lia Thomas won an NCAA championship in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday. With her victory, Thomas, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. https://t.co/eRtOM2m1UW

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 17, 2022

Now that Thomas has definitively proved that people born with vaginas cannot hold a candle to people born with penises in physical strength, please don't tell me we're going to have to rethink girl firemen?

March 28: “State Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat and [Florida’s] first openly gay Latino lawmaker ...”

A sentence that CANNOT BE SPOKEN in Florida, thanks to Ron Death-Santis’ “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” law that never uses the word “gay.”

April 20: [Announcing new editors, Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan]: “Ms. Ryan will be the first openly gay journalist to serve as managing editor of The Times. Mr. Lacey is the third Black journalist to serve in the role.”

And thank God the Times has rid itself of those nonentities, Donald McNeil, Bari Weiss and James Bennet.

April 29: “[Maye Quade] had been seeking to become the first Black woman

Above, Piatak Family Christmases Past.

See earlier, by Peter Brimelow: The Singing Revolution vs. Open Borders Libertarianism

Like many Americans, one of my responses to the increasing rootlessness and anomie of modern life has been to take up genealogy as a hobby. Before the Ellis Island manifests were transcribed and made readily available to the general public, all I knew about the origins of my father’s family was that my Grandpa Piatak’s parents came from Slovakia and that my Grandma Piatak’s parents came from Poland. A discussion with my Grandpa Piatak shortly before he died left me with the vague sense that his parents had come from the area around Kosice. About my Polish side, I knew even less, only that they had come from the part of Poland under Russian domination before World War I, a domination that was remembered as brutal. (By contrast, thanks to my mom’s paternal grandfather, I knew that her direct male ancestor traveled on the Anne and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1623, and another was the first white settler in Allegany County, New York following the American Revolution, in which he served on the American side.) This may seem to be completely irrelevant to the War on Christmas, but what my family retained from Slovakia and Poland helped inspire and inform my own defense of Christmas and I believe some of what I have learned in my genealogical sleuthing could be helpful to all Americans wishing to preserve the public celebration of Christmas as part of America’s identity.

That was all the information that was passed down because that was all the information my paternal great-grandparents and grandparents thought was relevant. We were in America, had no plans to return to Europe, and did not want to live in America as though we had never left Europe. As my grandparents and great aunts and uncles used to say, “We are in America, so we speak American.” (Yes, “American” is what they called the language in which I am writing). My grandparents and their siblings knew from their parents how desperately poor the family had been in Europe, and they were all happy to live in America and proud to be Americans, born in Cleveland after their parents had arrived, not taken through Ellis Island as children. The only things my dad’s parents treasured and maintained from the patrimony they had received was their Roman Catholic faith and some distinctive customs surrounding Christmas.

The most solemn moment of our family Christmas celebration was always dinner on Christmas Eve. By tradition, it was meatless. For many years, the dinner was run by my Grandma Piatak (baptized Stefania Kowalczyk) and her older sister Mary (baptized Marianna Bronislawa Kowalczyk).

Dinner began when either my Grandpa Piatak or Uncle Walt broke off a piece of oplatki for himself and handed the remainder to the people sitting next to him, who continued the pattern until each of us had a piece. (Oplatki are rectangular pieces of unleavened bread with the texture and taste of old-style Communion wafers and feature pictures relating to the Nativity of Jesus Christ.) The head of the household would then lead all of us in saying grace, after which we began eating fish, pierogi, the Polish-style sauerkraut we called “kapusta,” and peas. Dessert consisted of nut and poppyseed rolls, together with more conventional Christmas cookies for the kids. The menu, and the ritual, never varied, but the source of the fish did.

One particularly cold and snowy Christmas Eve stands out. That year, we got the fish for our dinner from Arthur Treacher’s, a then-popular fish and chips chain. It being Parma, Ohio,

As we go to pixel, it’s (astoundingly) still unclear if GOP Establishmentarian Rep. Kevin McCarthy will be elected House Speaker on January 3. Some conservative lawmakers are still refusing to vote for him and, without their votes, McCarthy can’t take the Speaker’s seat[Kevin McCarthy’s speaker bid in balance as effort to placate hardliners flops, by Richard Luscombe, The Guardian, January 2, 2023] This drama has an immigration angle. McCarthy is doing all he can to win Patriot support: he says that no Amnesty will be passed if he’s given the speaker’s gavel and that he will fulfill the threat made by some House Freedom Caucus members to defeat any legislation sponsored by pro-Omnibus GOP senators (who effectively deprived the House of the ability to use the power of the purse against immigration through the Fiscal Year).He also promises other conservative wish items, such as an investigation into the intelligence agencies targeting of patriots [Time is running short for McCarthy to lock up Speakership, by Emily Brooks, The Hill, December 27, 2022]. He hints he may be open to impeaching unindicted visa fixer DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—and even possibly President Biden (recently suggested by—Shock! Horror!—National Review’s very politic Andrew McCarthy: Impeach Biden over the Security Catastrophe He’s Caused at the Border, NRO, December 31, 2022. ) Bottom line: there’s a Patriot backlash in the GOP/GAP—presaged by the (largely uncelebrated) failure of Uniparty Amnesty initiatives in the just-concluded Lame Duck session.

Lest we forget:

Democrats and a few GOP traitors tried to pass three Amnesties and one green-card giveaway before the new Congress took over. All these attempts failed, reassuring the Historic American Nation that Amnesty isn’t going to pass anytime soon:

• DREAMer Amnesty

Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis joined forces on this attempted sellout of the Historic American Nation. An Amnesty to legalize illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as children— “DREAMers” in Treason Lobby code—passed the

Bruce Lee club.     In last month’s diary I gave notice that I’d be at a December meeting with Bruce Lee enthusiasts.

A Hong Kong-based outfit named Infinity Studios has produced a life-size bust of Bruce Lee for sale, in a limited edition, at $4,000. Yes, it’s a bust, not a statue: a remarkably lifelike model, but only from the waist up.

Some Bruce Lee fans here—the same ones I reported having had lunch with in my July 2018 Diary—have put in an order for one of these busts. They’re having a dinner in its honor at Angela Mao’s restaurant in New York City when the bust arrives at some December date not yet precisely specified. They’ve invited me and I shall of course be attending. I’ll report back in next month’s diary.

The date turned out to be Saturday, December 3rd. I spent all afternoon with the enthusiasts and had a most enjoyable time of it.

There are Bruce Lee fans all over, by no means only in the USA. Charles Damiano, whom I met on December 3rd, has a YouTube channel about Lee with more than eleven thousand subscribers.

Here in New York City and its suburbs there seem to be only myself and Angela Mao who (a) acted in one of Lee’s movies, and (b) live locally, and (c) enjoy participating in these occasional get-togethers. So there we were on December 3rd at Angela’s restaurant in Queens, welcoming the arrival of that $4,000 Bruce Lee bust.

A fan poster of the young Derb being knocked down by Bruce Lee

The bust is beautifully made, with terrific attention to detail. The hair is, so far as I could judge, real hair; the eyes look like real eyes; the skin looks and feels like real skin. I didn’t realize that the arts of simulating human tissue had advanced so far.

Yoke those arts to Artificial General intelligence (which half the experts recently consulted say will be with us before 2061) and… Katy, bar the door.

Well, it was fun to party with these people, and of course flattering to be treated as a celebrity, if only a very minor one. I’m an enthusiasm enthusiast: I enjoy being among people who share some harmless enthusiasm, whatever it is. I think I’d have a good time at a gathering of lepidopterists or stamp-collectors. There’s always something to learn, and what better way to learn than from people who love their subject-matter?

On this occasion I was particularly obliged to one of the Bruce Lee enthusiasts who works in graphic design and has an appropriate skill set. He made up a neat montage for The Way of the Dragon featuring the 27-year-old me just realizing that I’m about to become the recipient of one of Bruce’s flying feet. Many thanks for that, Ed; and yes, he did one for Angela, too.

Angela told us, by the way, that she will shortly retire from the restaurant business. So if you want to meet a genuine Bruce Lee costar (I was only an extra) while enjoying some really good Taiwan cuisine, get your booking in at Nan Bei Ho.

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Dandelion and Burdock.     We keep an insulated flask of hot water on the countertop next to the kitchen sink. I’m an early riser. My first task in the morning is to pour hot water from that flask into a glass tumbler for Mrs. Derbyshire to drink, conveniently warm, when she appears a half-hour later.

Pouring the glass this morning I noticed that the flask water had a faint brownish tinge. I pointed this out to my lady when she showed up. Had she added something to the flask water?

”Yes, burdock. It purifies the blood.”

Knowing her weakness for traditional Chinese herbal remedies, I did not object. In any case I know burdock of old.

Back in my 1950s English childhood my family took periodic delivery of soda—or ”pop” as we called it—from a firm named Corona. Each delivery was a mini-crate of six bottles, each bottle closed with a complicated wire-and-plug stopper. The six bottles were six different flavors: orange, strawberry, ginger beer, and so on.

One of those flavors, which I particularly liked, was ”Dandelion and Burdock.” I suppose there was some kind of English (or perhaps Welsh: the Corona firm was based in Wales) tradition behind that, but as kids we just enjoyed the taste of the stuff.

Earlier: PETER BRIMELOW: We Believe Our Big Ideas Will Ultimately Prevail—But We Need Your Help! and Donate to VDARE.com here.

I write a New Year's Message every year here, and say things like 2014 Was The Year Of Dave Brat (the immigration patriot professor who beat GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his own district) or 2016 Was The Year Of Miracles, one of which was the election of Donald Trump.

2022 was the year in which we held the "Uncancelled" Conference at the Berkeley Springs Castle:

Kudos to them and to all of those who helped make VDare Uncancelled a significant stride forward in the most consequential of American campaigns yet: the enabling of our posterity’s survival and its flourishing in the centuries to come.https://t.co/hdN5EEtQ2V

— VDARE (@vdare) May 3, 2022

That wasn't the only thing that happened, but I found it significant.

See ADJUSTING TO THE POST-AMERICAN AGE—James Kirkpatrick’s Address To The First VDARE Conference.

The reason why this "Uncancelled" conference was so important is that there were and are many efforts to "Cancel" us, including the repeated Cancelling of our conferences at other venues.

I gave a talk myself (The MSM Wants To Lie To You. We Won't Let Them .)

I won't say that this was of more national importance than the (very narrow) GOP victory in the midterms (good) or Biden's horrifying border treason and the illegals pouring across the border (bad) but it was important to us, and to you our readers.

It's a sign  that we're going to be here for you in 2023 and for many years to come.

Happy New Year from all of us at VDARE.com!

Earlier VDARE.com New Year's coverage: