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Well, that's disappointing.

In the most recent season of camp-fest The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Sabrina's current love-interest, warlock Nicholas Scratch (get it?) has saved everybody's butt by absorbing the Dark Lord into himself.

(I'll spare you the back-story. Trust me, this is TV: none of it makes any sense anyway.)

So, is anyone grateful to Nicholas? Ha. Instead, the girls at the Sabrina-universe equivalent of Hogwarts are giving poor brave Nicholas shit for being the Dark Lord's bitch because he's taken him inside of himself.

(This, of course, is ridiculous. Just because I give you access to my butt doesn't make me your bitch.)

Now—sorry as I am to say it—we know very well that this kind of homophobia goes on in literally every high school in America. Still. (Gods help us, if there's a queer high school out there somewhere—which I'm virtually certain that there isn't—this kind of homophobia goes on there, too. Alas, queer people are not exempt from homophobia.)

Of course, it's disheartening to see this kind of behavior on a show which—if not exactly good on queer issues—has been at least passable, if barely.

(The supposedly “bi” cousin's bisexuality lasted for all of one season; now he's paired off with a woman. The “gay” relationship is between a fae and a trans guy. [In these tokenistic times, straight screenwriters just love pairing up the gay guy with the trans guy. That way they get to check two boxes at one fell swoop.])

I mean: talk about unrealistic. It's easy to tell that these are TV witches, not real ones.

There are bound to be a lot of commentaries on the latest series of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the latest in the comics adaptations aimed at getting young adult audiences (and the not so young) to binge on the tales of teen sex and magic. The creators have fun with the links to Riverdale of course, and horror movies (showrunner and comics writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa grew up on comic books) as well as magic and the occult. You can already find a couple of thoughtful responses from Cunning Folk Magazine and the Media Witch.

No doubt there is a lot to untangle and most of it is probably not as deep as our analyses will go nor as seriosu (as we know) but I am struck by the use of Sycorax without using the most well-established aspect of her as Caliban's mother. In this series of CAOS Caliban is 'made of clay' like a golem (!) I guess for reasons to do with plotting. This move erases lineage but it also erases race. Sycorax as created by Shakespeare in The Tempest is Algerian and banished to this island presumably in the Mediterranean between Italy and Tunisia where Claribel, Alonso's daughter, was to be married to the prince.

“Seriously, what is it about witches and cannibalism?”

(Sabrina Spellman)

As every witch knows, unbaptized baby is a delicious, nutritious, and—in this overpopulated and increasingly nonreligious world—readily available food.

These days you can even get organic ones at Trader Joe's.

But—you might ask—is it really worth all the effort? And—on a strictly practical level—who has a large enough oven any more?

Now, plenty of witches have oven issues, of course: completely understandably, let me say. But do remember that, when properly jointed, what is traditionally known as hornless goat* will fit quite easily—even allowing ample room for plenty of vegetables—into the average roasting pan. If it will hold a turkey, it will hold a baby.

 Sabrina: Oh Ambrose, Aunt Hilda: what a beautiful Christmas tree!

Aunt Zelda: I wish you wouldn't call it, that, Sabrina. It's a Yule tree.

Well, I can die happy now: I've just seen television's first Winter Solstice holiday special.

Courtesy—of course—of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

And believe me, this isn't your mother's Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

Come on, admit it: Sabrina's lots of fun. It's way campy and (unlike those silly Wiccans who want to protest how “inaccurate” it is) doesn't take itself too seriously. In fact, it doesn't take itself seriously at all.

And it did bring us TV's first Winter Solstice holiday special.