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Yuletide
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haikujaguar posted a small challenge to write about what your winter holiday of choice looks and/or feels like to you.
As most readers of this journal know, I live in the Great Pacific Northwet (at least most years -- this December has been unreasonably dry so far), in a climate where we normally see very little sun from about Thanksgiving to about Groundhog Day, to the point where people make jokes about that big gold shiny thing when it does deign to show its face. The days are short (we go from 16 hours of daylight in late June to 8 hours in late December, meaning that people can and do go to work in the dark and come home in the dark). What daylight we do get is normally shrouded in clouds. Most people here are chronically short of Vitamin D if they don't take supplements.
Don't get me wrong, I love the climate here for nine months of the year. Our summers in particular are absolutely gobsmackingly wonderful. It's worth it to deal with 3 months of gray and gloom.
But I have discovered in the last eighteen years since I moved here that Christmas lights (and, in particular, a lit Christmas tree) are crucial to my existence. I don't celebrate Christmas as such except for a few exchanges of gifts (I'm more of an animist than I am anything else), but I do celebrate the turning of the year. And a large part of my celebration is celebrating the return of the light. What better way to do that than with, er, lights? Lots and lots and lots of lights.
So, the Yuletide season to me is gray and gloom with pinpricks of wonderfulness draped over houses and trees, and the good clean smell of rain on the Douglas firs and spruces. I wouldn't have it any other way. Especially since I grew up in Southern California, where Yuletide means going to get a Christmas tree in your shorts, with the Santa Anna winds filling your hair with static, making you pop everything you touch, and your skin feel like a potato chip. Even as a kid I knew that was Just Wrong [g].
haikujaguar posted a small challenge to write about what your winter holiday of choice looks and/or feels like to you.As most readers of this journal know, I live in the Great Pacific Northwet (at least most years -- this December has been unreasonably dry so far), in a climate where we normally see very little sun from about Thanksgiving to about Groundhog Day, to the point where people make jokes about that big gold shiny thing when it does deign to show its face. The days are short (we go from 16 hours of daylight in late June to 8 hours in late December, meaning that people can and do go to work in the dark and come home in the dark). What daylight we do get is normally shrouded in clouds. Most people here are chronically short of Vitamin D if they don't take supplements.
Don't get me wrong, I love the climate here for nine months of the year. Our summers in particular are absolutely gobsmackingly wonderful. It's worth it to deal with 3 months of gray and gloom.
But I have discovered in the last eighteen years since I moved here that Christmas lights (and, in particular, a lit Christmas tree) are crucial to my existence. I don't celebrate Christmas as such except for a few exchanges of gifts (I'm more of an animist than I am anything else), but I do celebrate the turning of the year. And a large part of my celebration is celebrating the return of the light. What better way to do that than with, er, lights? Lots and lots and lots of lights.
So, the Yuletide season to me is gray and gloom with pinpricks of wonderfulness draped over houses and trees, and the good clean smell of rain on the Douglas firs and spruces. I wouldn't have it any other way. Especially since I grew up in Southern California, where Yuletide means going to get a Christmas tree in your shorts, with the Santa Anna winds filling your hair with static, making you pop everything you touch, and your skin feel like a potato chip. Even as a kid I knew that was Just Wrong [g].