I don't like Winter. There, I've gone and spit some humbug in your eggnog but it had to be said: I hate winter.
When I was a young, sticky hobbit it was an even tie between the sheer delight of presents and the moist, toe-curling horror of that snow that finds its way into the thought-impenetrable fortress of snow suit and woolen wear. Now we don't even have snow, just skeletal trees and naked fields and COLD. I mean, COME ON. Winter's only excuse for being a season is having snow. Without those postcard-perfect flakes of natural disaster dandruff its just the inedible cone without the ice cream, the bread minus Nutella, the hot water without the hot coco. Its a shameless sham of nature!
Lately I've felt much more like a Christmas hermit than a Christmas caroler. Or maybe a lone-wolf caroler who can't sing worth a sprig of mistletoe (which, did you know, is poisonous if ingested? Yup, I've gotta rain on all the parades.) My hours are spent building pockets of body heat with blankets in which to read, baking cookies and toffee, and (when i'm feeling really brave) entering the warzone that is last-minute Christmas shopping. Another little known holiday fact I might have made up: Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer wasn't born with that scarlet nose, he got it while wrestling over the last Polly Pockets Glam Set with an irate Aunt.
I'm seriously considering making a last-minute addition of one of those artificial sun lamps to my Christmas list. Right up until lunch time the watery-dregs of sunlight are trying their best only to be swallowed up by what I like to call THE BLACKNESS. Or Bob. We are so well acquainted now, after all. Its a little like being one of those needle-jawed fish with a bad overbite and glowing headgear in the depths of the ocean so far from the surface that they never see the light of day, blindly navigating grottoes of nibbling predators. Clearly I need a shot of Christmas cheer, straight into the vein. And to stop watching creepy Discovery Channel documentaries.
Christmas isn't all seasonal depression and money-mongering, of course. There is also the constant merri-go-round of sickness. But really, there are perks to the shiver-some months. For example, our Christmas tree. I'm not sure why but dragging oversized shrubbery into my living room every year brings me joy. Something about the nonsensical idea of trees in my house combined with the fairy-light fire hazzard sparks the inner pyromaniac and warms my heart. Christmas lights in and of themselves are pretty grand, too. Not the huge house displays of strobe-light rainbows that aren't safe for the epileptic-prone to see, no. I like the simple white lights looped around roof-edges, window-sills, and railings. Its like a hundred lightening bugs frozen in time.
So guzzle that eggnog, wear your "I'm at home, the neighbors can't see me" clothes in public under your winter coat, and remember the true reason-for-the-season: raw cookie dough. I mean Jesus's birthday. But cookie dough is important, too.
Merry Christmas,
Hannah
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