【明報專訊】Pre-Christmas articles are usually easy to write. Reindeer, Christmas trees, the prospect of gifts and the guaranteed holidays are handy topics to wrap up a year, however smooth or rugged (崎嶇的) it has been. This year, however, society is so fractured and traumatised that any mention of festivity feels like an accomplice to the brutality plaguing the city. Unresolved questions of police violence, the poker faces of officials, funeral bells of the dead and unsung goodbyes to our feathery, avian friends who lost their way in a man-made cloud of poisonous gas have all created a kind of discord for the Christmas carols. We have relative peace in the streets. We do not have peace in our minds.