Christmas sours summer Down Under

Ah, summer... a time of kicking back, relaxing, barbeques, outdoor adventures, extended hours of beautiful daylight, swimming, camping, road trips, and general fun, and... Christmas?!?!

Christmas - a time of hustle and bustle, with people mashed together like potatoes in the big consumer pot, shopping and shopping and shopping to mangled festive music seeping out of store stereo systems. The pressure builds, anxiety flares, frustration lashes out.... until the big day pops... and then everyone shuts down for a week.

I have realized that living in the northern hemisphere has an advantage over living in the southern hemisphere. In the south, the Christmas epidemic runs rampant at the brink of summer, diminishing it (summer) for two weeks or more. In the north, Christmas occurs at the brink of winter, when the sun barely graces the land with its glamorous rays, and in no way affects our precious summer!

Christmas was meant to be in the winter. Sleigh rides loop through moon or star-lit snow and return to warm winter fires. Ovens floweth-over with baked goodies and hams and turkeys, warming homes and appetites. Santa Claus, who lives in the North Pole (where there is lots of snow) has a sleigh, and sleighs are meant to run in snow.

The other day I was baking some Christmas cookies in a friend's kitchen; it got so hot that when I was done I went outside to cool of and let the summer breeze and sunshine dry my shirt. It was weird.

I'm probably being an ignoramus... I just got off the phone with a Kiwi who says he knows it no other way - this is how Christmas is and should be. He doesn't "buy" the whole "snow and sleigh-bells deal" that the north propagates. Christmas, to him, is warm, long sunny days with barbeques... however, I did coerce him to agree that the north gets summer, *plus* a Christmas festive season - the south has the two lumped unfairly together.

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