‘Chop your own wood and it will warm ya twice’ and other gems from Sarah Palin

A humpback whale has recently been spotted swimming up and down the Hudson river. Pictures show it curled up above the waterline like a huge inflatable toy, flanked on each bank by the New York City skyline.

According to experts, the whale, whom locals have nicknamed Gotham, is hungry. Gotham is ploughing up and down the river from Liberty Island to the George Washington Bridge, mouth agape, in an effort, scientists assume, to swallow as much of the Hudson fish buffet as it can.

Now I’m not disputing the findings of a bunch of cargo-shorts-wearing marine biologists. These kids have worked damn hard to get to where they are. They’ve gone to grad school, they’ve sweated over term papers on phytoplankton and dinoflagellates, they’ve signed petitions to protect the rainforest, they’ve lost their virginity in the back of eco cars. They may even have asked their moms to substitute nut loaf for turkey on Thanksgiving. They are, one is tempted to assume, a well-educated, environmentally conscious cohort of sensitive, skilled Americans. But I can’t help feeling that, despite their advantages, they’ve got the Gotham story spectacularly wrong.

I suspect Gotham is ploughing up and down the Hudson, slack-jawed and disorientated, dumbfounded and adrift, because he or she finally read Sarah Palin's seasonal tome, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.

A whale in search of therapy

Poor old Gotham. The maddened leviathan got to the last page, used a dorsal fin to hurl the book against a disintegrating iceberg, waved a grim goodbye to Alaska and the productive Ms Palin (the state’s former governor) and headed for Manhattan. That humpback isn’t looking for a bellyful of bunker fish, mate; it’s in search of therapy.

Palin’s book isn’t new; it was published in 2013, at a time when the woman’s random seasonal ruminations were at best vaguely amusing and probably seemed, way back then, about as toothless as a rubber mammal. Her personal recollections and recipes for the holiday season – including moose pie (first shoot your moose) – doubtless appeared at the time relatively harmless, the mistletoe musings of a woman floundering around for attention and drowning in her own snow boots.

Given the current political climate, however, her displeasure with the secularisation of the season, her calls for the freedom to express traditional Christian values and her encouragement to readers to “see what is possible when we unite in defence of our religious convictions and ignore the politically correct Scrooges seeking to take Christ out of Christmas” (those of other faiths or none, presumably) feel more insidious.

It’s not all fire and brimstone and smokin’ moose in Palin’s epic read though. A little like the proverb she shares on its pages – “Chop your own wood and it will warm ya twice” – the book serves not just as a diatribe against secularisation but also as a heartwarming glance through the frosted windows of the Palin household at Yuletide, a look back to when her children were small and you could wave across the frozen tundra to happy Russian peasants knitting bedsocks for little Putineski.

Sugared Trumps

Look through the amber glass with me and see there, illuminated by the fireside glow, the eskimo-grass-woven baskets filled with mouthwatering little sugared Trumps – oh no, sorry, hang on, the light is playing tricks with my eyes. Those eskimo baskets are actually filled with snow shoes and rifles!

And see there, look! The happy faces of two of the Palin children, Pistol and Brick, I mean Bristol and . . . whatsisname, running excitedly around the ranch, past the effigy of Hillary Clinton strung up among the seasoned spruce. There they go, vaulting over the freezer full of wild game, their Christmas presents (shiny new BB guns) casually slung over their delicate shoulders.

What are children’s guns called anyway? What does one ask Santa for? A teething rifle? A gun with stabilisers? A gun that burps and cries real tears? Maybe we should ask Sarah’s husband Todd.

Todd gives good gifts, Palin tells us emphatically, with a salvo of exclamation marks. Todd gives guns. And he’s easy to buy for: the thought of a nice powerful new firearm will keep a smile on his happy, contemplative face as he chops the wood that’s warming him twice and drags that there moose carcass into the freezer.

Yep, ’tis the season of plenty. Plenty of moose to feed Bristol and Pistol and Track and Truck; plenty of ammunition to fill the eskimo baskets and plenty more to look forward to in the plentiful days to come.

Good god, I’m going to follow Gotham up the Swanee.