In practice a better approach would be to build up a micro-library of functions to just implement the small subset of features you do need.

  // Using underscore/lo-dash and ES6.
  _.forEach(document.querySelectorAll('.class'), elem => elem.hidden = true);

  // Building reusable utility functions
  function forEachSelector(sel, cb) { _.forEach(document.querySelectorAll(sel), cb); }
  function hideElement(el) { el.hidden = true; }
  forEachSelector('.class', hideElement);

Of course, there is the danger of ending up with homegrown jQuery that is less well tested and less well thought out. Perhaps there is a place for a small JS library that works with native DOM elements, in the same non-invasive way lo-dash and underscore work with data structures.

The problem with jQuery is that it's an all-or-nothing approach. The way it wraps native DOM nodes means it keeps trying to pull you back to using its inbuilt utility methods.