Kathy Kiely

Opinion contributor

Say what you will about Donald Trump: He is no hypocrite.

Following a year of endless Twitter rants about FAKE NEWS ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, he’s not about to stoop to calling a holiday truce in his war with the press.

Nope, in a scoop undoubtedly heard with dismay around the Beltway, Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz has revealed Trump’s bold decision to abolish the traditional Christmas party that presidents host at this time of year for members of the White House press corps and their bosses.

It would be nice if thick-skinned members of the Washington press corps could just shrug this off with a good riddance and a retreat to the National Press Club for some holiday cheer where we are welcome.

But in addition to being thick-skinned, reporters are also — the president’s fulminations to the contrary notwithstanding — truth tellers. And the truth is, this Grinch-like behavior hurts.

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A very Twitter Christmas, by @Trumpmas_Carol

Not however, the people you might think and not for the reasons you might think.

It’s not about who gets to go to a fancy party. It’s about whether anger gets to trump (pun intended) civility and whether tradition gets kicked to the curb by one-upsmanship. Who’s having a war on Christmas now?

Trump chose his target and his weapons with his usual unerring political instinct: Imposing eggnog and gingerbread deprivation only reinforces the images he seeks to peddle of the press as an over-coddled elite.

Some coddling. Some elite.

I used to cover the White House. What I remember most vividly about my daily routine is trying to avoid breaking a leg on the tripods and cables that crowd the dank little press annex and the ever-present smell of vending machine fare heated up in a microwave oven.

The media Christmas parties I remember as Cinderella events: the one night a year when us denizens of the “downstairs” got to dress up and break cookies with the “upstairs” crowd.

White House Christmas party made us mindful

Some might argue that it’s not healthy for members of an independent press to swan around with the big shots we cover. But for many in the media, the White House Christmas party amounts to a much more innocent kind of fun: a chance to give a little treat to the long-suffering family — the people who put up with the late-night phone calls, the weekends lost to work, the missed dinners, soccer games and school pageants. I used to like to bring my dad.

That’s the important thing that will be missing this year. Because the White House staffers would bring their loved ones too. And for one night a year, we saw each other not as a member of the pestiferous press or a highly placed White House aide, but as a daughter, a grandson, a brother, an uncle, a mom.

It’s only one night. But like Cinderella’s, it pays long term dividends. It makes us see the humanity in each other, and makes us a little more mindful about how we speak to and about each other.

You don’t have to look far to see why that matters. A week ago, there was a Christmas party at another chief executive’s mansion. In a heartbreaking series of tweets, Capital Gazette reporter Joshua McKerrow recounted what it was like to do the annual story about the holiday decorations at the Maryland governor’s mansion without his longtime reporting partner, Wendi Winters. She was one of five employees of the Annapolis newsroom massacred in June by a gunman with a grudge against the paper.

“I'm comforted that in a way she's still with me, when I do the work that she loved to do,” McKerrow wrote. “Journalism. Patriotic, truth telling, American. We'll keep on doing the work.”

Yes, Joshua McKerrow, we will. Eggnog or no eggnog.

Merry Christmas to all, grinches included. Here’s hoping for a happier New Year.

Kathy Kiely is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism and a former political reporter for USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter: @kathykiely