People the world over will remember this Christmas.
The continuing pandemic, with the rapid spread of another variant in various parts of the world, would be reason enough. People are still getting sick from covid-19. They're filling the hospitals again and too many have died. The virus-related death toll in this nation alone is more than 800,000 and counting.
A year ago, Americans were trying just to get through what they thought was a passing threat. They gave up big holiday gatherings, didn't travel as they normally would and interacted cautiously with anyone outside their nuclear families. Many adhered to mask mandates and other safety precautions.
What Americans, and presumably other citizens of the world, have since let themselves believe is that the pandemic is all but over, that we can live life as we did before the virus began to spread and mutate and alter whatever we considered normal.
We can't. The threat continues.
Maybe those who have been immunized against the virus can safely interact with each other, but they can still get breakthrough illness or carry the virus to others, including those who are unvaccinated and otherwise vulnerable.
Again, just dealing with the virus would have been enough to make this Christmas memorable.
Simultaneously, however, this nation is going through political upheaval that quite literally threatens our democracy.
We're just a couple of weeks away from the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Finally, the House committee investigating the matter is beginning to share some of its findings, but those who planned and financed the attempted coup have yet to be identified or held accountable.
Meanwhile, the political divide in this country widens, extending even into public health issues, including the reluctance of so many to get vaccinated to protect themselves and others from covid-19.
What's worse, legislatures in states across the nation, including Arkansas, have taken steps to restrict voter participation. But pleas to the federal government to act to protect voter rights have so far gone unanswered.
What happens on that front may be the most concerning issue of all before the U.S. Congress.
Add to that the fact that this week, President Joe Biden's major domestic agenda, the Build Back Better plan, appears to have been scuttled by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Manchin announced that he is a "no" vote on the program, which needs every Democrat's "yes" vote to pass the U.S. Senate.
As of now, that's not going to happen, although the president and the West Virginia senator are supposedly still talking.
As bad as all that is, the Americans most impacted this Christmas are those in a half dozen states, including Arkansas, where tornadoes ripped through neighborhoods and downtowns and destroyed everything in their paths.
These December storms were deadly, especially in hard-hit Kentucky. Arkansas lost two of its citizens, including a nursing home resident in Monette.
People in all of these states are looking at a long path to recovery, hoping for federal aid to rebuild their homes and businesses and relying on family, neighbors and friends to help them piece their lives back together.
This will be the year the tornadoes took thousands of homes, ripped out power lines and other infrastructure and shattered dreams in community after community.
Never mind the lost Christmas gifts and decorations and the treasured traditions in all those fractured households.
This is the Christmas none of them can ever forget.