I’ve been planning to blog about seasonal weather, not about the weather in the news. Most of the US is having such a fierce cold snap, though, I want to acknowledge it. The weather reports remind me of the horrible winter in Boston four years ago that motivated us to move to California. I am truly not experiencing even a hint of schadenfreude. So many of my friends and relatives are suffering, and I can empathize! However, I do feel a lift in my heart every time I step outside.

Our younger son is adamant in his insistence that it’s not truly winter, or Christmas, without cold weather. I countered by reminding him that in Australia Christmas happens during the summer, while most of Africa and South America are in the torrid zone. Even in the US, cold is not the norm for all. Christmas in shorts was not uncommon in the Houston of my childhood.

Houstonians did exchange cards with pictures of colonial houses, read books about Santa coming down the chimney, and adorn our creches with fake snow and our trees with fake icicles. On arriving in Boston in December after my college graduation, I immediately thought, This is the archetype for Christmas. Though I now think I was wrong. More likely it’s, I don’t know, Germany?

I have visited Hawaii once, and it happened to be in December. I found colored lights and snowflakes draped on large, colorful tropical plants ridiculous, so I should be more sympathetic to my son’s finding colored lights on sailboat spars and outdoor flowering shrubs ridiculous. Perhaps the dissonance is due to the amount of deviation from our usual experience.

Yet our expectations can be set by culture as well as experience. When I moved to New England, I didn’t enjoy the cold, but I did think snow and Christmas decorations looked wonderful together. I still feel our best Christmas mornings were those spent by the fireside, with snow softly falling outside the window. I must have been culturally programmed to appreciate this.

In actuality, the whole scene is made up, right? Thinking of religious Christmas, I seem to remember hearing that Jesus wasn’t even born in winter, and while it can snow in Bethlehem in winter, it often doesn’t, and it certainly doesn’t look like New England or Germany. So at some point we evolved to marketing Christmas, with Santa Claus and chimneys and colonial houses and sleighs and snow.

For most of us who celebrate Christmas, the messages of peace and love and the spirit of generosity still predominate. That’s good, because when you start to unpack concepts,  it’s so easy to feel manipulated. Why do I think what I think about Christmas? Is thinking even part of it? Do I choose my feelings, or are they imposed on me?

I’m glad I waited until the holidays were over to muse about this. Happy 2018!