A scene from our yard:
Remember when you were young, and you’d start frothing eagerly for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving (or a bit before)? In my day, you’d get the Sears toy catalog in the Fall, and you’d obsessively study it day after day and make lists you’d leave for your parents to find. Now I was scarcely aware of the existence of the holiday until now. I guess I’m old and jaded.
My backyard is still green (well, greenish). We got a flurry a couple of hours ago but nothing stuck. The government forecast has change from cold and snow to cool with showers or flurries the rest of the week. Only tomorrow is now forecast to be below the freezing mark. Forecasts change, of course, and the weather on southern Vancouver Island is hard to model. So we’ll see.
We’re forecast to hit 31’F tonight and 48’F tomorrow. By next weekend, lows with be in the low 40s and highs in the low 60s. If I want snow, it’s 200 miles away in the Sierra Nevada.
i was discussing how i’m not interested in presents anymore, as an adult, and she said “when you grow up it’s more about giving than receiving.” that made me realize a big problem with my household. that’s mostly true of all of us, which means we want to give a gift and no recipient will feel as wonderful about receiving as we’d hope.
Christmas is really difficult this year. My wife’s mother died in January and Christmas was really big to her. At 95 she was still quite a baker, made dozens of different cookies. Wife has one sister who is having dementia like issues but we will have her here for the day. None of my siblings are close by so we’ll just talk on the phone. Do have a tree, I love Christmas trees, always have, but that may end soon. Life changes so much in so short a time. Seems unfair but whatever.
PZ, neat picture. We, too love evergreen trees for many reasons. And, for many years we have not ‘killed’ one to celebrate the season. Here in Scarizona we have very cold weather too, but we rarely get snow that ‘sticks’ and we aren’t interested in deep snow anymore.
A member of our organization created this as a pleasant little diversion:
http://theartsinarizona.org/JnD2022decorations.gif
Yes, change seems to accelerate as we get older. We are no longer focused on ‘massive consumerism’ and lots of gifts. We wish everyone a pleasant solstice (winter here and summer for the upside down crowd in Australia, lol)
We’re supposed to get snow around christmas, when the outskirts of the storm hit us. Let’s see if or when that actually happens, there are mountains all over the place here so forecasts for more than a day or two out aren’t that reliable.
Ah, the Sears Wishbook. I can remember how it sounded as you turned the pages, how it felt when you held it, even how it smelled.
I did find the next best thing, if you’re ever feeling nostalgic: http://www.wishbookweb.com/
We’ve gone from -3C to 14C overnight, and the snow which has been sitting on the roofs and the ground for a week looks like it’s all been washed away by the rain. I’ll just be happy if the ice has gone from all the chokepoints where cars and/or people compacted the snow solid and made movement dangerous. I’ll be able to get to the shops and stock up on parsnips, mince pies, custard and rum — that’ll be my Xmas, that and the UK’s strongest seasonal tradition, a Bond film.
Oh shit! There’s no Bond film! That’s it, Xmas is cancelled…
The last two weeks were unusually cold for my not-mountainy part of Germany. About -15°C at night, still freezing during the day. Now it seems we are switching to the Christmas weather I grew up with, cool and wet.
Of course it first started raining tonight and it’s expected to thaw some time after noon – haven’t heard a car all morning. Am I glad I can work from home!
The whole Christmas thing is strange for adult me. I don’t believe in the whole baby Jesus thing anymore of course, and what’s left seems to me mostly commerce and many people feeling forced to give gifts and meet others they can do without. Used to hang out with friends instead but they got their own families now, so I just try to ignore the whole thing, except buying copies of my favourite childhood books for my friends children.
And for some funny reason, as I grow older, I feel nostalgic for the Christmasses of my childhood, the presents, the tree, the candles – even if I never want to experience one of our typical family Christmasses ever again, with my depressions and anxieties getting triggered by the dark and the rest of the family fighting while I keep my head down to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
Is that an Ent or a Huorn?
Question: is Morris in a zone that would revert to forest without human intervention, or are you in a zone where open grassy plains would dominate?
From the little I can see in the image, it looks pretty much like central Scandinavia (but presumably with continental climate extremes in summer and winter).
I stopped giving a fuck about Christmas around the age of 16. So you don’t have to be old to be jaded.
#7
Sears catalogs are collectors’ items now, making great Christmas gifts for us older folks who looked forward to getting them in the mail as kids. eBay has a nice collection of them for sale.
Around the turn of the century you could even buy a pre-assembled house from Sears, running around $1,500. There are a few of them still standing near me in Pasadena, going for upwards of $700,000.