Holiday spirit

Been here 7 years now, and each year I’m finding it harder and harder to get into a holiday kind of mood. It just never feels like Christmas.

It’s the weather. It’s just not wintry enough for me to get into the right mood for the holidays. Having been born and raised in Edmonton, winter and the accompanying cold and snow are second nature to me. Winter, for me, kicks off the holidays. It means watching the first snowfall, and venturing out into the dark quiet that follows where all the noises seem muffled. It meant Bill Matheson on ITV talking about that “dreaded of all meteorological phenomena, the Siberian High” and the weather in Baker Lake. It was donning layers of warm clothes, filling a backpack with sandwiches, a thermos full of hot chocolate and heading off for a hike through the river valley. It also meant walking to school in skin-numbing -35°C cold on more than a few occasions, but you take the good with the bad.

Now a few flakes falling to the ground is a huge news event and grounds for shutting everything down. A cold day might reach 5°C and just below freezing at night. Is it any wonder I can’t get into the holiday mood when I’m still walking around in shorts?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the mild winters as much as anyone from colder climates would. I love torturing my friends with pictures of me walking on the beach in shorts and a t-shirt on New Year’s Day while they’re freezing their butts back home. Aside from the summers, which are a little toasty for my liking, the weather here is great. It just doesn’t trigger that holiday feeling in me.