Denver Public Schools, DPS Foundation and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts declare “let there be a 37th annual Shakespeare Festival.” Not plague, nor pestilence, nor pandemic will interrupt the pleasure that more than 5,000 schoolchildren of all ages take in the country’s oldest and largest Shakespearean festival for youth.
Does thinking about the holidays this year make you feel a bit like a Scrooge? We understand the feeling. It can be hard to stay merry when there’s so much going on in the world. For the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the inability to produce our annual tradition of A Christmas Carol this year came as a disappointment. The Wolf Theatre renovations are nearly complete, but with current CDC and city guidelines in place for slowing the spread of COVID-19, it simply wasn’t possible to make it happen this year. We found ourselves saying, “Bah, humbug,” more times than we care to admit.
Our two major political parties, once frenemies, appear locked down in irremediable differences. Disputation has poisoned our daily life, coarsening relationships and affecting too many aspects of daily existence. Anger, incivility, prevarication and racism have plunged us into social paralysis.
To say nothing of shootings.
Since 1952, the day after Thanksgiving has been considered the official start of the holiday shopping season, although the term “Black Friday” didn’t come into popular use for several decades. In 2005, the phrase “Cyber Monday” was first used to describe the increase in online shopping just days later.